After the post about finding local, home-made lotion for my parents I was inspired to venture into making my own toiletries. I had a couple reasons to want to try: often the containers that toiletries come in aren’t recyclable, frequently they have scary sounding chemicals or ingredients that are animal products, and really, it just sounded like fun. So I spent some time poking around on the internet doing some research.

The recipes I found ranged from simple to complicated, so I avoided anything that sounded like it would be hard to find (for example, I decided to not use glycerin because it is predominantly synthesized, which is something I wanted to avoid). Some people also added various oils and extracts (citrus, spearmint and tea tree oil being a few), but the consensus was that all you really need is some baking soda and sea salt.

In homemade toothpaste, baking soda is the cleaning agent and the sea salt is a mild abrasive used to clean the plaque off teeth. After brushing with a mixture of this I realized that for the sea salt, size does matter. While everything I read advised that if the granules of salt were too tiny, they would be effective, if they are too large they could damage your gums. Once I resolved this initial snafu, I’ve been brushing with a mixture ever since. I use hydrogen peroxide to rinse and discovered it to be quite effective. My teeth feel cleaner afterwards and I’ve had no complaints of morning breath.

The best part is that the mixture was super cheap to make and unlike tooth paste containers, the baking soda box is recyclable and I’ve been putting the mixture in an Indian food take out container. So far, the foray into DIY toiletries is going well enough to give me confidence to try more ambitious projects, like making deodorant and lotion. If you have any DIY bathroom ideas, or personal experiences experimenting with DIY toiletries, please leave them in the comments.