Diaper Pail Deodorant Discs

The deodorizer discs are working, and not just for the diaper pail. I stuck one behind the kitty litter box (for 2 kitties) and the discs are working tremendously there too. So here is the "recipe" for making your own deodorant discs.

Ingredients:

2 cups Baking Soda

1/2 cup water

10 drops Tea Tree Oil

10 drops Lavender Essential Oil (EO)

(I suppose you could use 20 drops of some other EOs but I am going for the properties of these oils)

Hardware -

2 glass bowls

a spoon

1 12 muffin tin - I say tin, but I only have a silicone one. If you use tin, I would line the pans with something to make it easy to get them out later, like silicone liners.

Directions:

Pour 2 cups of baking soda in a bowl. Mix water and EOs together in a separate bowl. Add water and EOs to the baking soda and mix until well incorporated.

The mix should be like wet sand, but not too wet - you just need it to clump so you can put it in the muffin pan.

Take approximately one large spoonful of the mix in each cup of the pan. Press the mix into the cups. I had my 2 year old do this job and he loved it - mashing a cup into the pan forms.

Set the pan in an area that will not be disturbed and is not very humid for about 24 hours. Remove the discs from the pan and place in the bottom of garbage pails, or anywhere you need a little extra deodorizing power.

These discs are a little fragile so handle with care. If they stop working - you no longer smell the pleasant smell of the oils, then you can always add a few drops of oil to the disc to refresh it. I am storing the extras in a glass container (so the oil is not absorbed into a plastic container) and in the back of the pantry so they are not jostled too much.

Diaper Pail Woes

I have been having a battle with my garbage pail for what seems like an eternity. I have a liner in the pail, but I guess boy pee is just made to be super potent ammonia smelling. Maybe girl pee smells this bad too, maybe it is just toddler/baby pee but I can't seem to get the smell out of the pail. I wash diapers about every 2 days or so, I was the liner, and I wash the pail, then I leave it out in the sun most of the time to dry hoping the sun will bake the smell out - maybe the sun is baking the smell in. Then I throw about a quarter of a cup of baking soda in the bottom, and a few drops of tea tree oil. Back goes the liner, and we are off for another few days. Now mind you, this is not a cloth diaper issue - when we used disposables, we had the same problem, and moved the garbage can out to the garage. I don't want to move my cloth diaper pail into the garage. This cleaning method is just not working to my satisfaction, so I have tried something else - I really hope this works better. I made my own deodorizer "cakes" today from baking soda, water, tea tree oil and lavender oil. I mixed everything up, mashed it into a muffin tin, and set them out to dry. It should only take about a day for them to cake up. This way, I can put a cake in the bottom of the pail, as well as in the top of the little ball where you are supposed to put some sort of chemical deodorant that the company who makes the pail sells.

I took pictures - if it works after 2 days, I'll post the pix and the exact recipe.

No-Poo Update

I love my no-poo hair!  It has been over a month of very light experimentation.  I figured out in the first week what works best for me is either every 2 or 3 days putting about 2 tsp of baking soda in a cup with about 1/2 cup of water and pouring that over my head to massage in is the best method, for me.  I also have figured out that too many ACV rinses can leave my hair kind of greasy whereas no ACV rinses leave it full of static electricity, but only if I use the hair dryer.  I tried lemon juice as a rinse and love how soft it left my hair.  The only problem was I did not strain it, and I had lemon pulp in my hair for two days.  So, my conditioning routine is now only weekly, and using strained lemon juice.  The other benefit to the lemon juice is it provided some control to my hair like a mousse would.  I have not used any hair products like hairspray, gel or mousse either since May 1.  I could, but I don't feel any need.  At this point, I see no reason to turn back to shampoo.

No-Poo??

I have been researching ingredients in shampoo as it seems to be one of the last "beauty" products that we purchase.  There are so many reasons to stop using Shampoo:

1. Shampoo is expensive
2. Shampoo is one of those products that I have not yet figured out how to purchase without also consuming new plastic containers with each purchase.
3. Chemicals in shampoo irritate and dry out your scalp and hair.
4. Toxic chemicals in shampoo are absorbed through the skin - your scalp!
5. The body produces oil to naturally condition your hair and keep it healthy.  Shampooing upsets this process and causes the scalp to produce more oil than necessary to compensate for this stripping of the natural oil.

Now that I have decided to go "No-Poo," what is the next step?  Today is day 1 of "no-poo" for me and I decided to go the baking soda (BS) and apple cider vinegar (ACV) route.  I took about a tsp of baking soda in my palm, added enough water to make a thin paste, then rubbed it in to my scalp at the crown.  There is no lather, so to distribute the paste throughout my scalp, I gave myself a scalp massage with my finger tips.  This seemed to work pretty well.  I thought it would be hard to rinse out, but it came out better than shampoo ever has.  I then took about a tablespoon of ACV in my hand and tried to just add this to the tips of my hair.  This was awkward so I will probably just dilute and rinse over my entire head next time.  Come to think of it, maybe that is how I will mix the baking soda as well.  

I am taking some pictures over time as well - I have heard that there is a scalp detox period that can be kind of yucky, but that if I tough it out, the rewards will be worth it.

Oh - and if you are wondering if I smelled like vinegar all day, I did not.  ACV does not have that typical strong smell that white vinegar has.  And if you have ever mixed baking soda and vinegar to make that wonderful foam, that did not happen on my head either - so I assume I was able to rinse all the baking soda completely.