First, I spent months googling everything I couldn’t use anymore. Next, I spent a month googling everything I needed to replace. Then, I cried a lot of real, valid, frustrated tears. Trying to figure out how to function and appear in public without the help of SO MANY things that you just accept are necessary is overwhelming.
In the purge, I also had to stop taking the daily antihistamine I’ve been on for years because it was masking symptoms AND causing them. It also contained PEG. It was scary to realize that there was no safety net anymore. If I was exposed to PEG, I could go into anaphylaxis again. That fear led to a need to read the ingredients on everything I touched. Even if it had been marked as clean (with a green Sharpie check mark), I checked again, because I was learning new synonyms daily for a while. A google search for an unknown chemical led to another synonym or PEGylated chemical, which led to another thing I couldn’t use. The brain fog from the allergic exposure was still receding and made it nearly impossible to know which things I had checked against the most recent list. So I checked again. And again. And again.
I had several lower level reactions to things I thought were safe. The last time I dyed my hair, my scalp and face tingled AND my tongue was numb and without taste for several hours after I rinsed the stuff off. I noticed certain foods – or eating off of dishes washed in PEG-containing detergents or rinse aids – would cause coughing and near constant throat clearing for hours after eating, with water and cough drops having no effect. Once I learned that these are less severe symptoms that signal the start of a more delayed type of anaphylaxis, the panic that followed was real.
I had to check all the things because I might actually die. But compulsively checking all the things wasn’t a great way to be alive either. I had to stop looking at everything in fear or the anxiety was going to do as much damage to my ability to function as the PEG had.
I realized that all the chemical speak on these labels was part of the problem. Many of the word roots are common to SO many ingredients and there are just as many harmless ones as there are deadly ones for me. It hit me one day, during a particularly rough zoom session with my therapist – I had to stop looking for replacements. Instead of replacing each product I had purged with a one-to-one clean version*, I decided to see how many things I could do with a few ingredients that I KNEW to be safe for me. Natural oils, castile soap, white vinegar… how far could these things take me?
Meet my new boo, Dr. Bronner, and his magic soap. The soap label boasts 18 uses, which I had always been skeptical of; BUT I could easily read the ingredients list without google and I figured I would take them up on that claim. I needed more than 18 replacements and one product to do it seemed like a worthy experiment.
After some google and pinterest searches, I saw lots of people had 18+ uses for the stuff and I already had a bottle under the sink. I had nothing to lose. It really does work for a LOT of things. But that label though? What was up with that??
Since I was apparently putting all my apples into Dr. Bronner’s basket, I did some more poking around. His life was interesting and tragic (after fleeing to the US after the rising Nazi party in Germany, losing both of his parents to Nazi concentration camps and his wife to illness in a short span of time); his soap-making family history and university chemist training merged with his spiritual philosophies and led to his production of soap, with the labels designed to share his message. The company still follows his guiding principals that align with more recent concepts like sustainable agriculture, profit sharing, zero-waste manufacturing, and what they call ‘constructive capitalism‘. Their 2020 All-One! Report is a resume of business practices with which you’d be hard pressed to take offense. Their 5:1 salary cap is particularly impressive for a company that sold over $129M in 2019 and is transparent in how they use that money.
Clean, certified organic, leaping bunny certified product? Check.
Company I feel good about spending money with: Check.
Multi-tasking product instead of 18+ separate products: Bonus!
Personal care products:
- Shampoo? Castile bar soap *gasp* I know, right?! Spoiler alert – I love it!
- Conditioner? acidic hair rinse like this one from Dr. Bronner’s or diluted citric acid or apple cider vinegar
- Hand soap? Diluted liquid castile soap with extra oils
- Face wash? Diluted Dr. Bronner’s ‘shaving’ soap with extra oils
- Body wash? Diluted sugar soap with extra oils
- Make-up remover? Diluted castile soap – rinse it WELL and don’t open your eyes!
- Lip balm? Dr. Bronner’s has one, too, that I love! Burt’s Bees balm is a classic.
- Moisturizer? Pure cold-pressed oils like fractionated coconut oil or my favorite – sweet almond oil.
- Skin cream? Magic Balm or Miracle Balm or Everything Balm
I haven’t tried brushing my teeth with it, and I don’t think I want to. It tastes like soap… and I had one of the few clean ones in my cabinet already! I love Boka toothpaste and their toothbrush as well!
Household products:
- Household spray? diluted liquid castile soap
- Dish soap? liquid castile soap or Sal Suds
- Dishwasher detergent? same
- Laundry detergent? Castile soap for bedding, Sal Suds for laundry, or this one from Whole Foods!
- Fabric softener? white vinegar or this one from Whole Foods
- Glass cleaner? diluted white vinegar after a spray of diluted castile soap
- ‘soft’ scrub? liquid castile soap, baking soda and vinegar
It should go without saying that all of this is subject to trial and error. As we work through all these replacements, I’ll report back with what products and dilutions work for us.
As I find commercially available products that are safe, I’m adding them to this Pinterest board. Please note: I’m adding these products as I find them and they are safe at that time. Please always check ingredients on your products in hand if you have allergies as well.
*Note: there are a lot of one-to-one replacements out there, if you have the spoons to find them. I did find a few companies that claim not to use PEG, but then found polysorbates or other PEGylated chemicals in their ingredients lists, which is dangerous in my opinion. I also found 2 companies that don’t use either, but both are MLMs. MLMs have some practices that I don’t feel good about supporting, particularly the predatory nature of their ‘lady boss’ recruitment, so I won’t talk about those here.
Donita Westman 