A few days ago, Tikva asked a question in the Crunchy Community that I see a lot.
In a nutshell: What do we do with that cabinet full of icky products we no longer want to use on our bodies or in our homes?
This is a question I’ve gotten a lot over the past year and a half, and most of the time I just said, “Eh. I dunno. Whatever.”
Mostly because I still had my very own cabinet full of old products that I didn’t know what to do with. (Really responsible there, Crunchy Betty.)
It’s tricky, because one day you just kind of wake up and go, “I don’t want this in my life anymore,” but you realize you’ve dug a little hole and covered yourself with a whole bunch of bottles of gunk you no longer want, need, or can bring yourself to use.
And the hardest part is reaching that tipping point – and it happens somewhere after you realize that even most “green” cleaners and “natural skincare products” are still unhealthy – where you have a sudden, gripping fear that if you put one more nasty chemical on your skin, you’ll throw up (and probably die of cancer on the spot).
That fear is overblown, by the way. Not unwarranted, but a little irrational.
Now, I’ve done a lot of reading on how to get rid of cleaning products and unwanted personal care items, and the suggestions (from different green and ecoconscious groups) ranges from using them up slowly yourself to taking them to a hazardous waste dump. (Hazardous waste dump? Overreacting, iff’n you ask me.)
I’m not keen on the idea of just pouring things down the sink, though, because our poor water supply is already so mucked up with nasty pollutants (even after it’s treated), I personally don’t want to contribute to more blechy water.
The options I particularly like:
- Use them up and don’t buy more. You’ve already committed to buying it, and you’ve been using them for this long. Just … get it over with. And then you have bottles/containers you can reuse or recycle safely.
- Give unopened items to charity. And then don’t buy more.
- Give opened or unopened products to friends and family who aren’t quite where you are yet in being crunchy and conscious.
- Put an add on Freecycle or Craigslist that you’re giving away a bucket of products (note that they’ve been opened/used if they have) and then just watch someone drive up and take them away.
I’ve done all three of the first ideas. (I actually had to BORROW some of the items in the picture above, because I didn’t have enough store-bought items to pretend to throw in the trash … how awesome is that?)
When I’ve given people stuff that’s in a spray bottle or a container I like, I do ask if they wouldn’t mind giving me back the container, so I can reuse it. Spray bottles, especially, are hard to come by, once you start making your own cleaning supplies.
What Was/Is Your Solution?
So I pose this question to ALL of you:
What do YOU THINK is the best way to ditch your store-bought cleaning/personal care products?
What would you tell someone who was asking YOUR advice on how to do it?
Daisy Salve for Bumps & Bruises
Truthfully, I probably did the most extreme. Shortly after I had my son I realized just how unhealthy my habits and products are. I started with my baby and his everyday stuff. I just threw out all opened Johnson and Johnson. (Probably not the best idea but I was so disgusted) All unopened Johnson and Johnson I returned to Walmart (I swear they take everything back without a receipt.) For myself and all my products, I’ve recently started tossing out the chemical stuff as the stuff I was using gets low. Today I’m on a hunt for all homemade household cleaners recipes. We just moved to Minot so I don’t really know anyone who could use the stuff I have. Plus most of it is all opened. I have a hard time waiting.. and especially now that my son is crawling I’m on this crazy get. that. junk. out. of. my. house. rampage.
My old commercial products? i either use them up, or if i’ve moved onto greener cleaning pastures faster than i could finish a product i “gift” it to a friend that hasn’t gone green yet. yes, i know it doesn’t help encourage the “go green” mentality, but it keeps them happy, me happy, and my cupboards happy. if i know they’ll use it up, it saves them money, and i feel good about giving it to someone who would use it for it’s purpose rather than me ditching down the drain or in the garbage 1/2 full.
I have given to friends and family as gifts(unused items), donated to charity, given in swap meetup and used up the product til it was gone and never purchased again.
What great ideas! My general rule is to use it up and then make my own but occasionally I get antsy and have a hard time waiting! But… I can’t just throw it out. If I don’t/can’t use it up, giving it away is a much better option. Or I get creative with it… Extra shampoo and conditioner and other personal care products can go in the guest bathroom and will get used up eventually. I’ll also use shampoo for cleaning floors and toilet bowls (FlyLady: “Soap is soap”). Conditioner can be used as a shaving lotion on my legs.
When I decided to stop using Canola oil, I forgot that I had most of a CostCo-sized jug of it. It’s in the garage now, awaiting a trip to the haz-waste center. I guess, whether food or skin-care or cleaning products, it all depends on how freaked out I am by what’s in it. 🙂
I wasn’t going to comment but Stephanie’s post about her canola oil awaiting a trip to the hazardous waste center comment made me want to chime in. If you know someone who drives a vehicle with a diesel engine, ask if they want it. My husband drives a diesel truck and whenever I have oil that is starting to go rancid or is otherwise unwanted, I give it to him. He mixes it in with his fuel so it gets used up that way.
Another thought on using up shampoo if you want to go no poo might be to use it as a base for a toilet, tub or shower cleaner…that is if you don’t have that stuff already.
If you have friends who like the stuff you could give it to them and let them know that you are going more natural and crunchy. 🙂 If someone in your workplace likes lotion and hand sanitizer you could just leave it at work for them as an anonymous gift(or not so anonymous).
Would shampoo make a bubble solution? Kids might enjoy the bubbles and even some adults(me). Not sure if you’d have to add anything though. Why didn’t I think of this then?
In the past, I’ve brought a bag or two to work of things I no longer wanted and working in a large department with lots of ladies who use beauty and household products, they snagged up everything within minutes!
I remember when I moved, I had multiple bottles of shampoos that were half used and my friend gave me ones I had left behind. I wasn’t totally no poo at that point but I was washing less frequently with regular shampoo(a few times a month). I didn’t trust some of the ingredients even though the stuff I bought was more natural(healthy). I thought it would take years to use it all up so I stuck them in a cabinet and forgot about them. A year or so later, I wondered whether I could give them away or if they were too far gone. I finally decided that they were too old so I just tossed them (a bottle or 2) at a time. I felt a little guilty at first because I know how much they cost, but once they were gone I enjoyed the empty space in my cabinet.
As for cleaning products, I didn’t buy any new products when I moved and just tried to make natural product with stuff I had. I think my friend donated a few things for me to use but I didn’t use them much. I found a glass cleaner recipe online and tried to use more natural product to clean my house(baking soda/vinegar/Hydrogen peroxide/soap). That reminds me…I still have Windex and Mr. Clean in my bathroom cabinet that haven’t been touched since I moved in. Hmmm This poses and interesting challenge on how to get rid of them. Maybe I should give them back to my friend so she can use them. I could dilute them and use them(ewww!!). The smell of Windex kind of makes me sick just thinking about it. Can some of that stuff be used as a weed killer? Hahaha Not sure if that would work well though.
Sorry for such a long post
Thanks
The day I decided to stop using all the icky products I had full of parabens and other harmful stuff, I poured them down the toilet and saved the containers. I even got rid of all my Victoria’s Secret stash because I noticed that (at the time) they didn’t list any of the items ingredients on their labels.
I gave some cleaning products to my kids’ teachers for use in the classroom.
Unfortunately, I had to throw some personal care products away as they were expired. Lots of things expire within 2-3 years, so don’t wait too long to donate them 🙂
I will be bringing a couple of boxes to the local waste transfer station. If you leave stuff at the end of the loading dock, people go and grab what they want from there. The rest of it will be properly disposed of.
Most of the stuff I’m bringing isn’t even mine. It’s left over stuff from my landlord, like pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers, and all sorts of stuff that I didn’t even want to touch the bottles, let alone keep them in the house where my kids are bound to find them. Apparently they were meticulous about all the flower gardens and stuff. We are more of the “let it be, and see” types.
My daughter just gave all her personal care items she no long will use to a women’s shelter. They were happy to take them.
Great idea! I used to just use the products up, but now I’m just disgusted at the greenwashing and figure if I’m not going to use it in the future, why now? Once you know better, you do better. So now I give to my sister or friends who aren’t as far along in the green your routine process as I am. If it’s unopened, I will sometimes donate it to our humane society’s thrift store as well.
I agree the last thing you want to do is pour down drain, flush, or throw away. Freecycle or free stuff on Craigslist, donate, give to friends or family, anything but waste it into the enviroment!
If it i something hazardous, my county dump will properly dispose of it, I just bring it in on a Saturday.
I used my old cleaning and personal care products up and replaced them with home-made versions. I kept all of the spray bottles, pumps, chapstick tubes, and face cream jars to reuse with “my” stuff. I like the idea of donating unopened (or even opened) products. My daughter has sold half-used fragrances, spendy creams, etc on eBay with good success.
Let me finish my last thought and say that you can donate them to thrift stores. ;-)~
I frequent thrift stores, and they always have open cleaning and beauty products for sale…
I read somewhere that you can put as much in one bottle as you can and take it to the pharmacy and they can incinerate it along with the old prescriptions you aren’t supposed to keep.
When I got to my new house, I discovered I had moved a LOT of cleaning products. Oops! But after having chosen (kinda expensive) low VOC paint, I wanted to keep the low-chemical thing going, and try making my own cleansers. It worked so well that all my old chemical-y stuff sat in the garage for two years.
Finally I dusted it all off and wiped the drips off the bottles, so they all looked nice. Then I left them in a box at the end of my driveway. Within a day, they’d gone off to their new home, somewhere they’ll be used up (and hopefully the bottles recycled!)
I gave a really long answer in the community for Tikva. 😉 You condensed it more elegantly. LOL
One thing I failed to mention and strikes me as funny, so I’ll share, is when DH & I bought our first house and found out we were expecting our first baby (10 weeks in, no less). It was a crazy time (dot com era for DH, and I was working two jobs) and some new friends were having a garage sale. They offered to sell any stuff we had on our behalf and pass the money along to us. (The husbands worked together and we ended up moving to the same community.) We brought our stuff over, including a bucket of cleaning supplies (our new house was a fixer-upper wreck and I had kept DH’s supplies from his apt), but we decided to swap for baby gear and let them keep any money our items made. We were thrilled with the items we received. 🙂 Turns out, my bucket of cleaning supplies were the talk of the garage sale! People were fighting over them and paying top dollar, etc… LOL
Here’s an excerpt from my reply in the community, regarding using things up and not buying more:
Along the way, in order to make the process a little more fun and to satisfy my “need something new or different” cravings, I gave myself permission to switch products every month whether I had used the bottle up or not. I just had to “shop” from my own cabinet, not the store. I would pick a monthly scent and grab everything I had in that scent and put them in the bathroom. I cleaned up the “old” bottles and put them away in the “store”. As my supplies dwindled, I moved the products to smaller and smaller spaces so that it always looked full and there wasn’t any empty space to “fill up”.
Lastly, as I receive gifts of this nature, I pass them on to the teachers at my DD’s school via the adult-only restrooms and the teacher’s lounge. I check back to make sure I haven’t created “clutter” and the items usually are gone or put into use right then and there!
Since I’ve already bought it, I just use it up before I move on. I’m just trying to finish up the last of my dishwasher detergent and window cleaner and will move on to the homemade stuff! I still have a lot of floor cleaner, bathroom cleaner, and multipurpose spray to use before I can make my own, though. It’s kinda like a motivation to clean house more often to use it up…. 🙂
I’ve been using things up before moving on. For one thing it has helped moving to homemade less stressful. Especially since I started with food and then moved on to cleaning products. (I make all my condiments and well… everything we eat from scratch.) You can’t do it all at once!
I’ll tell you though, just yesterday I was using commercial foaming shower spray stuff and I was having a hard time breathing! It never used to bother me, but I’ve desensitized myself to so many harsh chemicals that it was overwhelming. My 3..5 yr old twins kept coming in to “help” me clean and I kept shooing them away from the horrible chemicals! I don’t think I’m going to use that stuff again. I only have about one more use of it anyway. No more! I can’t wait to try out your bathroom cleaner recipe!
I agree completely. We moved desks around at my office and everyone was spraying this awful chemical stuff all over the place. I ended up sitting at my desk with a sweater wrapped around my head and face so I didn’t have to breathe it in. It’s amazing how bad it is when you don’t use it all the time. Scary that you didn’t notice it all that time!
After our third child was born my husband got me a housecleaning service for the first few months. (Yippee!! they do it all!!) After her first visit, the entire house was cleaned all at one time (which NEVER happens, I only do a room or two at a time) and the chemicals were SO overpowering that we had to open all the windows and leave for several hours.
I called the service and asked if they’d cut our rate if we provided our own cleaning supplies. I set her up with all our Method brand and vinegar based homemades for the second cleaning, on her third visit she thanked me for turning her onto some less toxic options, she said it was the first time in 3 years she hadn’t gone home with a head ache at the end of her day.
The hazardous waste site may sound extreme BUT in my community it is AWESOME! Here is why; they take all that yucky stuff and display what is re-useable (for less crunchy folks and they can come in and take it for free)and what is not usable they recycle/dispose in a responsible way and they are people who are educated in proper disposal. Also, they have all kinds of educational material posted about being more eco-friendly so that people who are coming to get their free stuff get a little education without me having to do it. They also have paint of every color of the rainbow so if you are painting something it is a great place to check out before you buy – and it is all free! So… it might be worth checking out if yours is as cool as ours!
Freecycle is my proven way of ridding the unused items fast… Of course when I list them to offer, I will mention about switching to crunchy options. Its has aroused some interest and help spread the Crunchy message ;D
I, too, have Freecycled commercial stuff that I no longer wanted — I dropped in a line about how I was switching to homemade versions, and it opened the door to several email conversations (and links to this very website). It was such a cool way to spread the word without being remotely preachy.
Use it. Lose it. Never, ever buy it again. Very Crunchy!
I have done all of the first three which I think are the best options. In a last resort situation when no one wants an opened and partially used product, I have poured it into the garbage and reused or recycled the container.
just want to reinforce that pouring into the garbage is better than pouring down the drain. 🙂
I’m actually going to be selling them in the garage sale I’m having in about a week. If they don’t sell, I’ll have to just throw them out, since I’m leaving to go back to the States.
yeah even I believe in using them and not throwing them off just like that or yup giving them to someone who would use is also something I have done!!!
Over the years I have weened out the most toxic stuff but have to admit, I lurv the wonderful scented dishwashing soaps…. The rest, I use up as I go along and try not to buy more. What a good idea to use it up and then reuse the containers for homemade cleaners… Smart girl Crunchy Betty… saving money is always a good thing.
Wow.. it’s been so long I can barely remember… I think I just finished using up the products and moved on. Wait– still actually have a few ancient bottles of toilet cleaner downstairs somewhere.. they’ve probably dried up by now.. 🙂
I used to buy new skin products before I finished old ones because I would read the label and it would sound like it would work so much better! So now I have a bunch of half used products that I already know are less good than some others (my friends make fun of me because I can tell them advice about almost any cleanser,lotion and mascara at Target). I use honey and vitamin E oil a lot now, along with Origins which I figured was too expensive to throw away. But I’ve been using my other stuff on my arms and legs, It uses them up faster and they are less sensitive than my face. I also gave my beagle a bath with one of my cleansers. LOL