. Nine Everyday Products you need for a Healthy Home .
- judithstred
- Feb 11, 2015
- 3 min read
All these items are staples of a healthy household.
I'll be posting specific uses in upcoming posts on Homemade Cleaners and Homemade Bath & Beauty products, as well as recipes, so to prepare, go and buy these in bulk! These ingredients will save you heaps compared to commercially made homecare products and are great natural non-toxic alternatives...
1. Apple Cider vinegar - too many uses to list fully here, but from a natural disinfectant to a health remedy, this vinegar works wonders. We drink it daily as a morning and evening tonic to reduce inflammation and restore your pH balance, which are large contributors to chronic disease and illness. Mix 1 tsp apple cider vinegar with 1/2 tsp baking soda (to neutralize) and top up with water. Bottoms up!
2. White vinegar - again this natural disinfectant has too many uses to name...deterred to use it as a cleaner because of the smell? Either add essential oils or simply soak citrus rinds, whole spices, and herbs in a jar of white vinegar for two weeks, strain, and then dilute to use in various cleaners. Get that vinegar infusing as my Nine Homemade Cleaning Products post is coming soon!
3. Baking soda - its many uses from deodorizer to cleaner to shampoo make this a must have- even outside of your baking cabinet!
4. Witch hazel - is a product derived from the witch-hazel plant. It contains tannins that make it a great healer of skin problems, as well as many other uses.
5. Castile soap - if you're wanting non-toxic, chemical-free soaps and detergents, this soap derived from vegetable oil (olive oil, soybean, coconut oil) is essential and should be available at most shops.
6. Aloe Vera juice - this plant juice is full of vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants and can be used for drinking and for hair and skin care. It is simple to make from an aloe plant and is an easy plant to care for: it likes full sun, doesn't require much water (succulent), and regrows rapidly (the larger the pot, the larger the plant).
7. Citric acid - powerful natural acid that that ensures that those natural cleaning products work just as well as chemicals. It can be found in high concentrations in lemons and limes, so you are able to replace citric acid in recipes (both culinary & cleaning) with juices from either fruit or vinegar. The advantage of pure citric acid? No distinct smell or flavour, which allows you to scent your products or flavour your dishes as you'd like...
8. Coconut and Olive oil - you'll find a lot of my recipes use coconut oil (only fat that should be used for medium-high temperature cooking) as well as many beauty products; look out for my Nine Loves of Coconut article where I try to summarize my favourite uses of coconut in all its forms and its health benefits. Olive oil is a great cooking oil but it can also be used in beauty and cleaning products. I use it to get label glue off of jars and bottles so I can reuse them!
9. Essential oils - to scent those products so there's no "it doesn't smell good" excuse to not make your own chemical-free products. Some essential oils can be expensive (lavender, peppermint) but others aren't (eucalyptus, tea tree). As eucalyptus is one of my favourites for cold rub/sinus steam, I'm in luck; lavender and peppermint are used sparingly in my bath products so despite the cost, I still save money on those products. As noted in the vinegar section, essential oils in cleaning product recipes can be replaced by soaking citrus peels/whole spices/herbs for 2 weeks in the vinegar to remove the vinegar/cleaning agent smell.
