Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Homemade Hand Sanitizer: I hate smelly hands.

Have you ever had a sub-sandwich and then had to type all day? Eew. I don't mind being dirty. I'm not a stickler about hygiene (sometimes I accept I'm the smelly kid in the room, and it's ok) or "smells", but something I dislike very much is having my hands smell like food after a meal. It's just something that bothers me. I don't need my hands to be a reminder of what I ate some minutes ago, and certainly not hours ago.


 (Piglet Mosh Pit = Swine Flu Extravaganza)

When the ¨Swine Flu¨ became the top story for every news media, the hand sanitizer industry´s stock probably went up high...off the roof, probably. At the moment I was visiting some friends in Washington D.C. and my mom called me to say: ¨BUY AS MUCH HAND SANITIZER AS YOU CAN! THE ENTIRE COUNTRY HAS RAN OUT OF HAND SANITIZER!¨ Obviously she was exaggerating. When I came back to P. Rico, I realized we hadn't ran out of Purell, but instead we were buying intensely huge quantities and in bulk! The entire island went sanitizer crazy. The media was hysterical about the A-H1N1 virus and we believed them. ¨Don't go where there are big crowds! Don't touch anything! Run if you see someone coughing! Get the vaccine or you'll die! But above all... ALWAYS USE HAND SANITIZER.¨

After that scare, the cleansing product became an everyday staple and part of our daily life and hygiene rituals. I even grew to miss having sanitizer after a meal. Not even for a moment did I sit down to think about what this product was made of, or what it could do to our bodies. I just liked my hands fresh and clean.

So, as part of my chemical and toxin detox, I stopped using hand sanitizer, but I missed it. In order to live with a healthy conscience and nice smelling hands, I decided to create my own homemade version! It came out great, I'm pretty in love with it and I now share it with you.


Toxin Free Homemade Hand Sanitizer!

You will need just 3 ingredients:

- Aloe Vera gel (as natural as possible, I made my own, which I'll later show how to do in another entry. It is very simple and actually, really fun.)

 - Isopropyl Alcohol

 -Essential Oils

I specifically used Thieves and Peppermint, but I would love to know what other combinations other people come up with.


1. Because I like the smell
2. They are antivirals.
 

Mix 1/3 of Aloe Vera gel, with 2/3 of alcohol. Add as many drops of oils as you would like.

Enjoy your nice smelling, moisturized, clean and completely pthalates and parabens free. (I explained what these chemicals do to our bodies in a previous entry, click in the link to check it out.) . 

Try it out, share it with others and let me know how it came out! 

2 comments:

  1. Mimi-- The Environmental Action Group at GMU used your recipe and made eco-friendly hand sanitizer at our meeting last week. It was a huge success! Everyone had a really good time and walked away with their own plastic baggy of toxic free sanitizer. Thanks for the recipe!!! Keep 'em coming, hopefully we can incorporate similar activities into our agendas!

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  2. <3 that is SO awesome to hear!!!! <3 I'm SO excited about that! Yes! I'll keep em posted! Love and kisses from Puerto Rico!

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