Coconut oil natural deodorant: Tutorial

I'm sensing a theme, yes another post about pits, armpits.  I'm afraid i'm passing the point of no return of crunchyness and have ventured into the realm of making my own deodorant, my only saving grace is that it doesn't contain lentils....or chickpeas.

What possessed me? Several reasons, the first being toxins and potentially cancer causing ingredients found in many deodorants and antiperspirants that are not only potentially dangerous yet quite frankly, bloody unnecessary too.  Secondly, most of them don't actually work.  No really.  Don't get me wrong i'm not some mutant walking puddle of sweat but when you have huge tits, breastfeed and baby-wear you get a bit sweaty.  One of my many symptoms of M.E is a sort of hypersensitivity to senses so even the smallest imperceptible whiff alarms me so although often unnecessary I wear Nivea 48 hour antiperspirant deodorant and am relatively paranoid about its effectiveness despite never having any concrete cause for concern. Nobody likes the possibility, no matter how unrealistic, of being a sweaty Betty.

A brief trip around Pinterest or Google will throw up many ideas for making your own deodorant, many simply varying a common theme and recipe centering around one of natures best kept secrets, coconut oil.  Seriously this is the bee's knees or should I say the trees bollocks, it has an awe inspiring variety of uses and some incredible health benefits, you can eat it, cook with it, put it in your tea and coffee, put it on your body and your hair, even use as nappy cream., polish your furniture with it and remove your makeup to name just a few of it's uses not even touching upon it's healing properties and that it can aid weight loss.

So how did I make my own natural deodorant?

1. Get together your ingredients, I used

* 1/4 cup of raw virgin coconut oil
* 2 Tbs Arrowroot (or cornflour)
* 1tbs + 1tsp Bicarbonate Soda
* 20-25 drops of essential (not fragrance) oils.

2&3. Coconut oil is often solid, so first step is to melt it, it should go from white solid to clear liquid

4. Add your other ingredients.

5. Mix! it should look kind of milky.

6. Pour into a lidded container such as a jam jar or rinse out empty moisturiser pot.  I use a rinsed out pot that had hair dye in.

It will harden up unless it's really warm in which case it will assume liquid form, it doesn't really matter you can use it either way.  Personally I put mine in the fridge for a few hours to harden it up.  To apply either rub the liquid straight under your pits or hold some of it's solid form under your pit then rub in.  If your prefer you could use an empty solid deodorant stick container, add beeswax to the recipe and refill the container and use it as a solid bar deodorant.

You can up the bicarbonate Soda content if you wish, I kept mine low as I have sensitive skin an it can irritate, but if you want to boost it's effectiveness even further just experiment and add some more.

The essential oils are totally up to you, many people like to use citrus ones in this recipe such as lime.  I use lavender, chamomile, palmarosa and mandarin.

You can even make it seasonal i.e in winter you could use peppermint, eucalyptus and clove.

To make a masculine scent you could use sandalwood, black pepper and clove.

Bare in mind this should stop odour but you will still sweat somewhat.  It also works on your feet, between your boobs an as an anti-chafing on your thighs.