A little over a year ago, September of 2009 to be exact, I first began my challenge to go without shampoo and use only baking soda and water to clean my hair.  (followed by an apple cider vinegar rinse)  That experiment I deemed a success and today I am still shampoo free.  But that was not to be my only experiment with baking soda.  I had read of using baking soda in place of deoderants.  Now, if you look it up, (i.e. google) you will find all sorts of formulas and recipes for ways to create your own baking soda based deoderant.  But for me, I went for simple.  Straight baking soda.

What I do is keep a 3 oz squeeze bottle (the type you would think of putting hand cream in) filled with baking soda.  I just squeeze out a little in my hand and pat it under my arm.  Quick and easy.  I started doing this last winter, and found it to work great.  But I didn't want to post anything about it at that time because, heck, it was winter after all.  Not exactly the sweatiest time of year.  I wanted to go through a summer and see how it held out. 

I can tell you that we had a lovely hot summer here in Maryland.  Plus I was still doing Insanity workouts.  So there was sweat happening.  However, the baking soda worked like a champ.  No odor problems at all.  I even tried using my mom's deoderant one day just to see if I would prefer the old 'tried and true' to the 'new and up and coming.'  When I did sweat, I did not smell like sweat with the deoderant.  But I did smell like deoderant and I found it quite repulsive.  I much prefer no odor! 

Now, I have read that some people find straight baking soda to be slightly irritating.  So an alternative is to mix 1 part baking soda with 6 parts corn starch.  Corn starch is supposed to have a bit of an anti-perspirant effect, so it makes for a good combo.  Me... I'm sticking with simple: straight baking soda.  Plus then I can use the same container for my "shampoo" and "deoderant."  Makes for easy traveling or overnights.

Wonder what I will be trying next.  Hmmmmmmm.....

Posted in: baking soda on Sunday, December 12, 2010 at at 9:27 PM