Her page inspired me to do a clean out of our house and become more aware of ingredients and what is added to products we use on a daily basis. Before I get any further, her page is @just.ingredients , I love the stuff she posts and she has quite a back story on why she started living this way. Before I get into the blog post of my non-toxic favorites, I wanted to share a few things.
First of all, I never want this post to make you feel guilty for any products you may use or have within your house. This isn’t important to everyone, but it’s important to me and I’ve gotten a lot of requests to share my favorites. We also didn’t do this in one day, it took time to clean out our house and bring in new products. I didn’t throw out brand new things, I would just replace them with a non-toxic alternative when we ran out.
I also am not perfect, I still use some items that probably aren’t the best, but I would say I use 90% non-toxic items in my everyday life, which to me is good enough. As I go through my non-toxic favorites, please know that none of this is sponsored, I’m simply sharing stuff I’ve come to love and continue to buy. However, there are some Amazon affiliate links associated with some items. Let’s get into it!
Beauty Products
Before I get into this, I wanted to mention the app “Think Dirty”. I found this app many years ago and it’s a favorite of mine! You scan any beauty product and it will rate it based on how “clean” it is. I often go on this app and just search “lotion” or whatever I’m looking for to find some different brands to try!
Ilia Beauty:
This company has easily become my go to for any makeup products. They use great ingredients and I feel 100% comfortable using every item from their line. My favorites from them that I use the most often are: super serum skin tint, true skin foundation, concealer, necessary eyeshadow palette, and both the volumnizing and limitless mascaras.
Toothpaste
This is somewhat of a controversial topic being that the toothpaste doesn’t contain fluoride. However, I’m not writing this blog post to argue with anyone so if you don’t agree with me not using fluoride, that’s ok but you don’t have to tell me. 🙂 Anyways, I use this toothpaste for both myself and Mia and it’s the best!
Body Lotion
Since I started using more non-toxic products I’ve become more sensitive to scented items, lotion being one of them. It’s so crazy because I used to use all of the bath and body works lotions but now they give me headaches when I smell them. Anyways, I love this brand! I also love using coconut oil as moisturizer too. 🙂
Body Wash
Attitude has become one of my favorite brands for a lot of non toxic items. 😉 Body wash is one of the few things that I buy scented because otherwise I feel like I still smell bad LOL.
Deodorant
Finding a good deodorant was easily the hardest thing for me when I switched to non-toxic products. I had to have gone through 20 different kinds as well as doing “cleanses” and whew it was rough lol. But I keep going back to Native and it seems to be the one that works the best for my body. I know that it might not be the “best” one but it’s also not the worse.
Hand Soap
This is just an individual container of the soap but they do have an option where you can buy a bigger size and just refill soap dispensers to save on waste!
Sunscreen
I know this brand is technically a “kids brand” but I loveee their sunscreen. It doesn’t go on thick and pasty like all of the other non toxic ones I’ve tried. Highly highly recommend!
Self Tanner
Although this doesn’t work as well as say a spray tan, it still gives you a little glow. I’ve realized how bad spray tans really are so I’m going to stay away from those going forward. If I need a little pick me up, I’m gonna stick to this self tanner!
Nail Polish
I actually don’t have a nail polish that I’ve found made with cleaner ingredients but I felt the need to touch on this. It truly is quite alarming once you look at the ingredients in nail polish. It kinda freaked me out when I started searching for a better one, I ended up throwing all of mine out and haven’t painted my nails in years. When I need them done for something I’ll get some stick on ones from Target and call it a day. If you’re looking to make the switch to non-toxic products I would really look into nail salons and nail polish. You also can save a ton of money by not getting your nails done ever other week!
Hair Care
This is the one area I’m still struggling with and haven’t quite found all of my favorite products yet. I have a few things I really like but I’m still looking for a few good items
Shampoo and Conditioner
Mr Smith is one of my favorite brands for shampoo/conditioner. It scored a 3 on EWG’s website so it could be better but it’s not that bad. I’ve tried soooooo many cleaner shampoo and conditioners and non of them worked. They made my hair feel so greasy and gross. I get mine from my hair stylist because she carries it at her salon!
Dry Shampoo
Although I really like this one that I linked, it still doesn’t compare to my favorite ever Moroccan oil dry shampoo. It does a pretty good job though!
Household Products
This is a broad category that will include things that don’t fit into other buckets or that I think go along side this blog post.
Laundry Detergent
I recently switched to this laundry detergent and I think I love it more than our previous one. We used to use Molly’s Suds and I do still use their baby detergent for the kids but we wanted one that had a nice fresh laundry scent without being overpowering. This one is INCREDIBLEEEE! Watch out though – their website sucks to order on haha, they really need to update it.
Dryer Balls
I use these wool balls instead of dryer sheets and they help so much with static! There are basically no non-toxic dryer sheets on the market and these wool balls are better for the environment anyways!
Dish Soap
I loveee this one for our dishes, as you can see Attitude is one of my favorite non toxic brands haha!
Candles
As I mentioned previously, since I started using more non-toxic products, I’ve become really sensitive to any scented things, and candles are a big one. I’ve mainly stuck to beeswax only candles if I feel like having something burning. I love the company Welch Candle Co. and they’re local to Wisconsin! 🙂
Reverse Osmosis Water Filter
I know this isn’t necessarily a non-toxic product, but just including this because water can have a ton of junk in it, even filtered refrigerator water! We had a counter top RO system from Aqua Tru which we loved but it was a pain to fill it up 10 x a day. So, we recently invested in an under the sink system and we LOVE it!
Air Doctor Air Purifier
Another item that isn’t really a product but just helps with overall health and cleanliness. We loveee our air doctor. It’s crazy watching it kick on when we do certain things. It kicks on the most when I use my hair spray which is so crazy to me. We have ours in the kitchen/main living area.
Cleaning Products
For this one I have a few favorite companies that I use for all of our cleaning products. I also wanted to mention how well vinegar works for cleaning! We use vinegar to clean our sinks and showers/tubs and wow does it do a good job!
Branch Basics
This company is easily my favorite for cleaning products and it’s such a cool concept! I bought their premium starter kit and then going forward just need to restock on the solution. They have different bottles based off of what you’ll be using it for (toilets, glass, counter tops, etc). Then you add their cleaning solution and dilute it with water. Their products work extremely well too!
Puracy
We use this company mainly for carpet cleaner/stain remover, amazing for if you have pets! Winston has an extremely sensitive stomach and throws up quite often, their pet carpet cleaner does an amazing job at cleaning up his puke and not leaving stains.
Cookware
This is still a bit of a struggle for us and we’re still trialing with pots/pans, etc but I’ll share some thoughts.
Pots & Pans
I try to use our cast iron or stainless steel pans/pots as often as I can. You can find pretty affordable cast iron pans anywhere, I picked ours up for $20 from Target. The stainless steel cookware I like is All Clad. Although it’s definitely more pricey, it is very very high quality and lasts forever! Other pans I like to use if I’m too lazy to clean my cast iron are these ones. This brand doesn’t use teflon to make it non stick so I like it for that reason. We also use that same brand for pots if we’re steaming vegetables, making rice, etc.
Kids/Baby
As you will see, I tend to stick to the same brands for kids stuff as ours but here we go!
Body Wash
I typically get the unscented one but Pipette is my favorite brand for baby/kids personal care items.
Lotion
No surprise here:)
Diaper Cream
Only complaint with this one is that it definitely stains clothes if you don’t catch it right away. Mia got a hold of it and rubbed it allllll over a pair of paints and they’re still stained haha!
Bottle Soap
I always use this to clean pump parts/bottles/etc!
Toothpaste
Same brand as us but the kids version 🙂
Diapers/Wipes
I have a few favorite brands for these. For little babies I love Coterie but they got expensive for both kids all the time so then I switch to Hello Bello for Mia’s diapers during the day and used Coterie on her at night. But I use Coterie wipes and diapers for Finely. The most annoying thing about these brands is that you can’t just walk into Target and buy them. So if you are wanting an in store brand that’s better, I’d go with Honest – they carry this brand at target!
WOW I think I’m done. This blog post got away from me, which I feel like happens with every blog post I write. I know this is a heavily detailed and long post but I hope it’s helpful! It will always be here for you to refer back to if you need.
Again, as I mentioned at the beginning, don’t feel pressured to throw away everything in your house and start this today. That would be so expensive to do. It takes time to wean things out and that’s ok! This is going to be a revolving blog post that I’ll add to anytime I find something new. I hope you enjoyed, as always I’m here if you have any questions!
Peace & Love,
