Homemade Deodorant-- do I stink?

This is one of those things I wavered on actually publishing here. It crosses some sort of invisible line of crazy in my mind but the thing that gets me is that this stuff actually works, at least, I think it does. I don't smell myself and hubby has said I don't smell any different to him either. So it must be working.

Why... why, why homemade deodorant. Well, first off, the cheap stuff I have bought forever (Secret solid in the blue tube) has started being not-so-cheap and it stopped working very well for me. I started to notice a smell at the end of the day, and oh my if I tired to re-wear a shirt, no way. I also started to wonder about all of the crazy chemicals and metals that are in this stuff. Hubby too is very sensitive to deodorant, he has to have a special kind and even that sometimes causes him to break out. I ran across a link for homemade deodorant in a blog I read, then found another and another then just had to try it.

So since November of 2009 I have not used commercial deodorant. There, I said it, come arrest me, better yet come sniff me!

This recipe is based off of one from this website: http://littlehouseinthesuburbs.com/

Deodorant

1/4 cup baking soda
1/4 cup corn starch
~2-3 tbs coconut oil
10 drops tea tree oil



Mix it all together until it forms a very dry thick paste and then pack it into clean commercial deodorant containers.






Comments:
* Coconut oil is a solid at 76F and below, and becomes an oil at temps above that.



When I started using this deodorant in November, it was great. I was able to store the deodorant in the bathroom where I typically keep that sort of thing. Then spring in Texas happened and I noticed a small pool of oil below my deodorant container in the morning. No problem, I store it in the fridge now and just think of it as refreshingly cool...

If 76 seems a little warm to you... here is the reading on our in-house thermostat on May 13th at about 3 pm.



Yes, 83 degrees. We generally keep it at 82, but there is a 1 degree sway before the blower kicks on. Plus you can the the amazingly poor job the previous owners did when painting our house, they did not even take off the thermostat to paint, so when we replaced it with a smaller, programmable version, we ended up with a patch of white wall (which we can't paint b/c we can't match the paint perfectly--oh and we're too lazy).

*Heading into the Texas summer, I am willing to accept the fact that this stuff may not be strong enough to handle a 105 degree day and my 111 degree van after being parked in a 105 degree parking lot. We'll see. I'm totally open to going back to commercial products if they are better than what I can make for myself.