It puts the lotion in the basket…

I love body lotion (but I love a good Silence of the Lambs line just as much). Sure, I tell my husband it’s a “marital aid” when used properly, but sometimes I just like how it feels and how it smells. It can be very relaxing especially on my dry skin.

When I find great products, I love telling all my friends about them. I’m a girl, so obviously I use a ton of personal care products. This sounded like a great place to start reducing some of the toxins we keep hearing about. The more I learned, the more I was horrified. I started questioning why cute little bunnies had to be injured or killed to make shampoo. Seriously, haven’t they figured out how to make shampoo yet? And why the fuck are we still testing eyeliner on animals, they don’t need it and are going to look ridiculous so just stop it! My dad always told me to vote with my wallet, so that’s what I do now. I decided to buy only cruelty-free products because I feel like now these Goddamn masochists are testing on animals just for the fun of it.

When most (not all) people decide to live a vegetarian lifestyle they stop eating meat and then they start to consider the health factors of what they use on their bodies. Well, bass-ackwards me did it the opposite way. I would sit down in front of a delicious skirt steak wondering if I could create deodorant from the contents of my refrigerator. My primary focus was what I was putting on me before it was what kind of foods I was putting in me. I learned a shit-ton about shampoo, conditioner, make-up, moisturizer, toner, hair masks, deodorant, laundry detergent and the list goes on and on. That’s going to be a big part of my website, so keep coming back and getting educated from Dr. Ellen.

Our skin is our biggest organ (heh, organ) so anything we put on it will go into our bodies, AND we’re girls. We don’t use just two or three products a day…even on a “picking up my kids from school in my PJs” day, this gal uses a ton of shit. So imagine all the toxins in one product and then multiply that exponentially. Math really isn’t my thing, but that sounds like a lot. So I’ve cut down on the amount of crap I use (helps save me money) and I look closely at everything I do use with the help of my Bible – The Environmental Working Group (www.ewg.org) which is a non-profit organization that aims to empower people by telling them what’s in what they use (not a description exactly written on their “About Us” page, but true nonetheless).

This all leads me to my quest for an acceptable tube of body cream. I use it on my hands constantly as I gave up using gloves while washing dishes. Why no gloves you may ask? Well, my friends I kept buying these nice expensive eco-friendly dish gloves and kept fucking puncturing them with silverware while cleaning. I never got hurt, truth is I didn’t even know I did it but my right glove kept filling up with water. I kept having flashbacks to all the urban legends about the pinholes in condoms and I couldn’t shake the image. After the gazillionth time it happened (and I was left with 6 left handed gloves), I threw up my non-gloved hands and decided to clean dishes bareback. Good news-no more wet surprises. Bad news-I started to look like a hand model for the Freddy Krueger movies.  Every time my hubby holds my hand he asks when we bought a pet snake.

I’ve tried a bunch of lotion and I really love 100% Pure. It’s not tested on animals, made with organic ingredients and smells yummy. The problem is, it’s always missing. I place a new tube on my night stand and the next day, BAM it’s gone. So either there are lotion gnomes making nightly raids in my bedroom or I have a thief. I turned my bedroom upside down, I blamed my kids, I LOOKED FOR DAYS. Finally, after looking everywhere I find it in my husband’s office drawer. WTF? Good news: My hubby finally joined me on the holistic bandwagon and is now using a better non-toxic product.  Bad News: He’s jerking off with my $17 a tube body cream and his dick smells like grapefruit (which actually might not be bad news after all).