These three products, or their variations, are all that we use. No shampoos, no fancy lotions and special baby things…none of it. It saddens me to see all the chemically laden, plastic wrapped so called baby products all over the internet, magazines, not to mention supermaket shelves. Parents are made to believe that they need those to take care of their most loved little ones. But in truth our children need none of that. And with these basic products they could be cared for in a healthy, simple and sustainable way. 🙂

This isn’t a sponsored post. These products are just the ones we are using. You could use other similar ones. There are many small businesses offering great natural care products. You could also make your own.

No shampoo is needed. E.V.E.R.

Contrary to the common thought children’s hair do not require being washed with any shampoo, ever. Ale (on the left), who soon will be three years old had never ever had his hair shampooed (commercial shampoo, DIY, shampoo bars, none of it). Same is true for Eleon who is soon to turn one. I’m posting their photos so you can see how beautiful and clean their hair is naturally and it is like this always. Not only that, but every couple months or so I put lots of coconut oil on their hair for moisturizing and occasionally rub some castor oil (supposed to help make hair thick). And I still do not wash their hair. I just leave it as is and in about 2 days it is back to normal all on its own. It sounds like magic…it still does to me. And I still can’t stop being amazed about it.

I believe that commercial shampoos ruin our natural balance of oil production in the scalp, making hair dirty more often. Similarly how many commercial facial washes strip the skin of oils and consequently making it more oily, instead of balanced.

I also noticed how in nature animals have the most magnificent fur, healthy and clean even though they sleep on the ground, go through dirt and do all the other brilliant things wild creatures do! I don’t know enough about hair to say if our hair is the same as animals. I’m just sharing here some observations that led me to try and not wash my boys hair. I hope their hair can stay just as lovely and always clean even as they grow up and undergo some hormonal changes. So far this has been a great approach for us!

Do we ever wash hair in any shape or form?

Once or twice I forced Ale into washing his hair with the liquid soap we use for everything around here. I did it because I felt he was playing a lot around dust and his scalp needed some freshening up. We had a major upset over the whole thing, so I never tried it again. Eleon’s hair we washed with just pure water on a couple of occasions just for overall freshness.

Why these products

Chemical-free

I’m posting more details below, so you can see the ingredients for each of the products. Clary Collection and Shea Brand use certified organic ingredients only and both have more products as well.

Zero-waste approach

Using these products allows me to completely avoid single-use plastic.

• Soap — to make this zero-waste I refill the liquid soap in bulk, as thankfully for us the company is local to Colorado. But they can send you a large bottle of their product as well by mail. The standard version unfortunately is a plastic bottle with a pump.

  Getting a large container refilled over the mail could be rather pricey, especially if you live far from Colorado. Look in to handmade bar soap that contains organic ingredients only. Instagram is great for finding things like that!

• Shea Brand does not currently offer refills, but you could use their tins around the office, for sewing supplies and in the workshop area to store little thingies. I hope they will offer refills soon.

• Clary Collection also does not offer a refill at this point unfortunately. I contacted the owner and hoping I can send her my bottle back for a refill or just order a large glass bottle and refill the little pump bottle at home from it. If not, I’m going to go back to using plain organic olive oil (buy the highest quality!) that we infuse with camille here at home. I use that on my own skin for years and it works like magic.

Supporting small businesses

I love supporting the businesses that still strive to provide high quality products and do not seek to enrich themselves at the cost of our health or planet.

Organic herbal oils and plant butters
instead of commercial lotions

Just like with shampoo and conditioner we are trained to believe that only those commercial products can do the job. But we, the humans, have lived for thousands of years. Kings and queens and other fancy folk over the thousands and thousands of years in our human history surely have had many great secrets of getting themselves pampered without any of our modern fancy lotions that are in fact loaded with carcinogens, hormone disruptive ingredients and preservatives (look them up on EWG.ORG), not to mention all the plastic packaging.

We live in a very very dry zone. It is also frequently windy. And we are at high altitude. The skin takes beating here. I’ve used organic olive oil instead of lotion and shea butter instead of hand cream for my own skin for many years and absolutely love it. I do the same for boys. For them I also sometimes put shea butter on their cheeks when they go out, for extra protection from the wind.

Recently I’ve discovered this wonderful brand Clary Collection who sells organic olive and avocado oils infused with many great herbs. I’ve been using it on Eleon after each bath. It is wonderful! Unfortunately Ale doesn’t always allow me to put anything on him. 🙂 Alternatively, you can use just a regular organic olive oil or infuse it at home.

Shea Brand is the brand we use for shea butter products. They are fantastic! Very smooth and high quality. My favorite is unscented, but they also offer some scented with essential oils, like jasmine or rose.

Soap

We found this soap to be great at not drying our skin, even though we live in a very dry climate and our water is very hard. It has many oils in the ingredients and the only ingredient that comes not from mother-natures is Glycerin.

Alternatively, you could find many handmade bar soaps that contain organic ingredients only. Instagram and ETSY are great for finding things like that!

Organic GOTS certified towels

I’m a big believer in the slow fashion. Read this post I wrote a few months ago to learn more about the subject. But in the nut-shell, your purchase of truly organic (means GOTS certified) textile not only is better for your skin, but also really supports the businesses who work very hard at treating our planet gently, their employees fairly while providing beautiful and healthy products for us to use. So we get the towels from Coyuchi.

A note on water

In closing I wanted to add a little note on the quality of water. When we first moved to Colorado we noticed our skin would feel even dryer after a bath. The water here is hard. So, we’ve had some water filters added to our house to soften and filter the water. We also added a chlorine filter to eliminate the chlorine. It made a big difference. We used to be able to smell chlorine in a bathroom when a bathtub was filled. Not anymore. And our skin feels much better. We used the Culligan filtration company to add the filters to our house. The chlorine filter we rented instead of purchasing to avoid big expense upfront. You can also get significant improvement with the screw-on filters that are added to your shower head directly.