Baking Soda Toothpaste? and other cleaners...

Baking soda is awesome! I'm switching over my household cleaners and other things to baking soda and vinegar based options. This is cheaper and fun and more convenient because I'll always have it on hand and most uses require just adding water or something.

There are two great books by Vicki Lansky about 101 uses of both vinegar and baking soda. I checked them out at the library, but they were so full of ideas that I think I might buy them online, because I found them on Amazon.

One use my husband has been enjoying (I don't prefer the taste) is using baking soda as toothpaste. We keep a little tiny container of baking soda in our bathroom cabinet and just dip a wet toothbrush in it and start brushing. It actually helps whiten your teeth, and you don't have to worry about all those unknown ingredients and chemicals. But if you do this, you might not be getting flouride (unless from your dentist or in your water--Utah's tap water has a high amount, so I don't worry about that). And actually, I've heard that fluoride in high amounts can be bad for you anyway, so I'm not too worried about that. If you don't want to do this all the time, you could maybe use a natural toothpaste every once in awhile too, because I think the baking soda could be hard on your teeth after awhile, if that's all you use. Not positive, but it works for us so far and many other bloggers whose posts I've read.

FYI, I've heard carrots are a natural toothbrush of sorts. One night I couldn't find my toothbrush, so I ate a few carrots. I know...not ideal, but better than nothing, right? There might be other options too.

Of course, these still lack the yummy mint, breath freshening..so make sure you chew on a mint leaf or pop an altoid or something. I haven't tried adding peppermint oil to the soda yet, but that'll be my next feat.

By the way, the only natural mints (without nasty artificial sugars...and flavorings) I can find at the store are the peppermint flavored altoids in the large container (even their smaller counterpart isn't 100% natural...weird). Costco has them in bulk. They're really atrong thugh, so we cut them all in half with a knife...the go longer that way too.

I'll include some basic cleaner recipes on here too. My natural Cleaners Post will list which recipes.