Jan 2021: What have I ditched and switched?

 We are 1/12 through 2021 and January is now in the books! What I love about Young Living's Essential Rewards program is how easy it makes it to ditch and switch my everyday products to natural alternatives that support my health and wellness. It's not realistic financially or logistically to throw out everything in the house and replace everything in one fell swoop, but switching out a few products every month is affordable and digestible, and makes the lifestyle transition sustainable. All of our household and personal care products are things we use anyway and eventually run out of, it's when I run out of things that I replace them with the Young Living version or other natural products. With that said, here are the items I switched out in January and what I have introduced into my routine instead:

Toothpaste: I bought the Thieves ER kit back in October or November, which includes the Thieves AromaBright Toothpaste, and I started using that this month as soon as I ran out of my other one this month. I was using Crest toothpastes, then I started using the XyliWhite one from iHerb, but I notice a huge difference in how clean my teeth feel after using the AromaBright compared to the other two. 

Hair conditioner: My hair can be quite high maintenance, or so I thought! My hair used to be chronically dehydrated and damage prone, pretty undernourished (with no heat tools and no coloring or bleaching it). It may have looked healthy to many people (evident by how many compliments I got on it) but it sure didn't feel healthy, and just putting it in a braid was such a hassle. I now know that the dollar store shampoo and conditioner I'd been using on it were the problem, and not that my hair is just high maintenance! Because I condition more often than I wash, I have not run out of my shampoo yet but when I ran out of my conditioner, I started using aloe vera gel with a few drops of rosemary essential oil almost daily, which has repaired my hair and given it new life! On days that I do wash my hair, I use the suave store bought stuff (that has a score of 8 on the Think Dirty app) and I have the Young Living lavender conditioner that I use afterwards to give my hair an extra boost of nourishment afterwards. 

Primer: I was originally using Nanoblur from Indeed Labs as my primer. While there are worse ones out there, it's still not clean (score of 4 on the Think Dirty app, which is pretty generous in terms of what constitutes "clean" so it's always worse than the score says). Once I ran out of it, I redeemed my points to get the Mattifying Primer from Savvy Minerals (Young Living's makeup line), which I have found to be just as effective for its intended purpose, but with skin-loving ingredients and essential oils, and I 10/10 recommend it, especially because the Savvy Minerals liquid foundation I switched to last month is dewy, so a mattifying primer gives me a healthy glow and a balanced look.

Deodorant: To be honest, I haven't settled on a specific one that I'm going to stick with, but I stopped using aluminum deodorants when I ran out this month and simply didn't go out and buy another one. The Young Living ones are not vegan because they contain beeswax, but I have tried the Cucumber Mint one from Native, and the Pineapple Coconut one from Schmidt's, and I like the scents of both and both seem to work. It's too soon to make a definitive statement about how well they work for me, but they look promising. I was not very picky about aluminum deodorants in my days of using them, so I wouldn't be surprised if I'm not picky about natural ones either and never end up settling on a specific one. The real test will be in the dog days of summer!

Now that you see what I've ditched and switched this month, here's a sneak peak of what I look forward to changing out this month:

Shower gel/bubble bath: I had a bunch that I'd accumulated that I'd received as Christmas gifts and because I know a flight attendant who always brought back hotel toiletries from her trips and gave them to me because she prefers to bring her own products. When my church's homeless ministry requested donations of travel sized toiletries in November, I donated the ones I hadn't used and I've since been using the ones that I'd already opened and now couldn't donate. This will be the month that I finish off what remains of them and I'll switch to the good stuff in a few short weeks. Young Living has several choices and I might also play around with DIY recipes because sometimes things go in and out of stock. 

Face wash and moisturizer. I'm very close to being out of both. I was using the Alaffia coconut one that I got on Thrive Market, which I thought were pretty clean (and they are compared to the ELF products I was using before that) but I was floored to find they have a score of 4 on the Think Dirty app! I got the Bloom cleanser and sandalwood moisture cream on my January ER so those are ready to go when I run out, which will be soon so that's another switch I will be making this month.

To those on your ditch and switch journey, what products did YOU ditch and switch this month?