Here are 5 super easy clean swaps to make now to avoid harmful chemicals in your home, bath and body products.
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As you make healthy changes to clean up your diet, don't forget about what you put on your skin and use in your home. These easy healthy living tips will get you started.
Many popular bath and body products, as well as household products like scented laundry supplies, cleaning products, and air fresheners, contain harmful ingredients under the guise of fragrance. These products often contain suspected endocrine disruptors, such as phthalates and synthetic musks (source: Environmental Working Group).
Here's what EWG's Skin Deep has to say about the use of fragrance on an ingredient label:
The word "fragrance" or "parfum" on the product label represents an undisclosed mixture of various scent chemicals and ingredients used as fragrance dispersants such as diethyl phthalate. Fragrance mixes have been associated with allergies, dermatitis, respiratory distress and potential effects on the reproductive system.
One of the easiest places to start in avoiding harmful chemicals is avoiding any product that uses the word fragrance on the label instead of disclosing the full ingredients list.
Sounds easy enough, right? Wrong! I've just eliminated almost every product on the shelf in your local drugstore or grocery store. It's taken me years to find replacements for all these products that have clean ingredients and actually work.
Today I'm sharing my 5 easiest swaps to make. These are the ones I've stuck with over the long term. They are super simple, quick, easy and painless. And they all replace conventional products that have "fragrance" with cleaner alternatives so you know exactly what's in them. I promise they are just as convenient as the products you're using now.
RELATED: 10 Clean Beauty Makeup Swaps to Make Right Now
Easy clean swaps to make today
These simple swaps will get you started with safer skincare and a healthier home.
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Dryer Sheets
Who else grew up with scented dryer sheets? Well, those dryer sheets are leaving a fragrance on your clothes so you can breathe in undisclosed chemicals all day. Not good.
This is one of the simplest swaps to make. Just put three wool dryer balls in your dryer and leave them there. They soften your laundry naturally with no chemicals or synthetics. Bonus: you will never have to buy dryer sheets again.
I've had the same set of dryer balls for a few years and use them for every load of laundry. You can use them plain (unscented) or add a few drops of your favorite essential oil if you prefer scented laundry.
Hand soap
Hand soap is the one DIY bath and body product I will actually make. DIY foaming hand soap is so easy you can barely even call it a project or a recipe. You only need two things - a foaming soap dispenser and a bottle of castile soap.
I use this unscented liquid castile soap which has extra olive oil for moisturizing. The large bottle lasts me about a year (the best price I've found is at Thrive Market).
Just mix water with castile soap and pour it into your foaming dispenser bottle. You can use it as is for unscented hand soap. Or if you like scented hand soap, you can add a few drops of your favorite essential oil. I like rosemary oil for a clean fresh scent. See the full recipe
Body lotion
Your skin is your largest organ, and the lotion you put on it covers the largest percent of your body. The ingredients in your moisturizer absorb into your skin (after all that's what its designed to do) so it's important to make sure they're not harmful. This goes for sunscreen ingredients too!
This citrus-scented lotion gets its scent from sweet orange peel oil---I love the light citrus scent! It's formulated without synthetic fragrance and discloses the full ingredient list.
Dish soap
It always amazes me how much fragrance is added to conventional dish soap. Even the grocery store brands that are labeled clean, natural or green can have an overpowering amount of fragrance. And standing over a sink full of hot sudsy water you are inhaling a lot of it.
The Seventh Generation Free & Clear is my go-to for fragrance-free liquid dish soap. I like their dishwasher packs as well because they are free of fragrance, chlorine, and phosphates.
Air freshener
Talk about toxic. Most air freshener sprays, plug-ins or sticks are full of synthetic fragrances and questionable or harmful ingredients. And they are designed to release that fragrance into the air so you can breathe it in!
A small diffuser with essential oils is the best way to make your house smell like a spa. Just make sure you use pure natural essential oils and not a blended fragrance that can contain harmful chemicals. Remember to read the ingredient list and if it says "fragrance" don't use it.
This is my favorite diffuser---I like the small size and minimal design. I'm usually diffusing Thieves in the winter and a blend of citrus oils in spring and summer. Here's my favorite DIY citrus oil blend.
So there you have it---my top 5 easiest clean swaps you can make today to avoid harmful chemicals in your home, bath and body products.
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