Homemade Deodorant

Feb 22, 2009

Posted by Lilla under Personal Care

Like most people I don’t like to offend. I shower regularly with soap (Kirks Castile usually). I’m a little sensitive to perfumes and fragrances, meaning that usually they give me a bit of an ache in my sinuses. Oddly enough…natural scents don’t bother me, flowers and herbs and natural incense, but that is another post entirely I think

So I finally ran out of the last store bought deodorant I will ever buy two days ago. I have been reading about how aluminum in antiperspirant isn’t good for people. I also have to wonder about trying to shut down a system that has been working well at cooling humans for millennia. Anyway…I started looking for natural ways to alleviate body odor. Not that I have a big problem with it, but like most people I can get pretty ripe on a hot day when I’m working hard.

I found a recipe that called for shea butter, cocoa butter, vitamin E oil, baking soda and corn starch. I don’t like the smell of shea butter, so I substitued coconut oil. The proportions are as follows:

3 Tablespoons Coconut oil

3 Tablespoons Baking Soda

2 Tablespoons Cocoa Butter

2 Tablespoons Corn Starch

2 Vitamin E capsules

Melt the Coconut oil and Cocoa butter in the microwave (mine took about 1 minute, but this will vary by microwave) mix in the baking soda and corn starch, then squeeze the vitamin e oil out of the capsules into the mixture and combine thoroughly. I poured this into my cleaned solid deodorant container (there was a little extra so I put it into a small ramekin) and put it in the refrigerator to solidify. You end up with approximately 4 oz of Natural Deodorant.

I’ve been using it for several days now, and I like it a lot. I haven’t noticed any body odor in spite of some pretty stressful hours a couple of days ago. It glides on smooth. It has a light fragrance that kind of smells like a “Mounds” candy bar. My only thoughts are that I will switch the proportions of cocoa butter to coconut oil next time to get a firmer solid. If you live in a warmer climate I would suggest keeping it in the refrigerator, as I will be doing when the weather turns nice again.

I figure the cost at about the same as a name brand deodorant .