Product Overload – Recalculation

109 – number of products in my bathroom as of August 22, 2008

2 – exfolients, found later in bag

3 – decorative soap, discovered later on shelf

4 – suncreen, found later with hiking stuff

19 – separate bottles given to me at Christmas or otherwise; regifted 12

5 – face products, found with travel stuff

 

142 – new total I have to work down from.  Ack!

Product Overload – Too Many Shampoos

The category is Hair Cleaning. 

The Runners-Up:  The wonderful smelling Aveda Rosemary Mint Shampoo:  Hazard 5, 60% data gap (which is pretty good from what I’ve seen so far).  27% of shampoos have less concerns.  Some of the ingredient concerns are Methylparaben (4), Phenoxyethonal, and the ubiquitous Fragrance (8).  The Aveda product isn’t as bad as many, but it doesn’t meet my criteria of rating 0, 1 or 2.

The Skin Deep Database lists so many products – 1,602 shampoos and 1,498 conditioners – that I felt overwhelmed trying to narrow the choices.   I didn’t want to make a special trip downtown for shampoo, but I was going on Day 6.  So I headed to Target.  I only wash my hair every 2 to 3 days but 6 is pushing it.  Of course, yet again I neglected to remember to print out a list of ideal from the database so I wandered around in the aisles and aisles of products coveting the sweet smelling lotiony goodness.  I ended up in the “natural” section and based my decision on brand loyalty, figuring that Kiss My Face products have rated fine up until now so they will probably be fine for this too.

The Finalist:  Kiss My Face Whenever Shampoo (and conditioner)  When I looked these products later they turned out to have a hazard rating of 3 with a 79% data gap.  Only 11% of shampoos have less concerns, but there are two ingredient concerns.  I’m not too worried about the Citric Acid (4) but the Cocamidopropyl Betaine (5)  is more bothersome.  You can read more about this lathering additive here.  The annoying thing is that neither the shampoo or conditioner lather at all as far as I can tell, which would be fine except the Cocamidoblahblahtaine is the worst ingredient.  So why have it?  I like these products, but I’ll look for an even safer ones when I’m done with these bottles.

The winners, sort of:

$7.99 per bottle

So I’ve picked two products – shampoo and conditioner – for one category.   To keep within my one product per category limit that means I have to pick zero for another category.  That’s an easy one – bath balls.  I don’t even know why I have bath balls (gifts again?)  I rarely take baths and when I do I’d just as soon sprinkle in a little baking soda.  I pick ZERO bath balls.

Project Product Overload Suffers Setbacks; New Resolve for the New Year

My attempts to lessen the products in my bathroom and find safer, more natural alternatives hit two setbacks near the end of the year.  The first was the holidays.  People gave me products, either singly or in gift packs.  I won’t list them all but let me assure you there were 19 separate containers (including lip gloss) and although I managed to re-gift many of them I still have 7 left.   Only 3 meet my criteria.  So now I have to either use the products or figure out something else to do with them. 

The second snag concerns facial moisturizer.  When I ran out of moisturizer in October I decided to try using my existing body lotions as face lotion too.  This lead to a horrible outbreak of giant red zits near my nose.  The lotion is just too heavy.  In fact, the better the product as a body lotion the worse it went for my face.  So I started searching for a facial moisturizer, but the products I have used in the past don’t have a low enough rating (0 to 2) on the Skin Deep Cosmetic Safety Database.  Oil of Olay Renewing Cream: 5,  Aveda All-Sensitive Moisterizer: 4

I had time on a dinner break the week-end before Christmas to go to Lunds & Byerly’s, which is a mecca for natural products.  But when I got there I realized I hadn’t brought any kind of list to tell me which products made the cut.  This is the first and only time I have wished for a BlackBerry.  I called Skoopy to see if she was on-line.  She had just gotten off the train in Harlem and was heading home.  I called Dana who said (I’m paraphrasing here), “You want me to look something up on-line for you?  You can’t be serious.  I have a real job and I’m trying to do it right now.  Click.”  I went to the grocery section of Lunds, picked up the items on my list then walked around eating free samples (cheese and dips then meat then back to the fruit).  Then I called Skoopy again.

She was home and went on-line for me.  These are most of the products we looked up, ranging from $8 to $24.

Alba Botanica Hawaiian Skin Care:  Jasmine & Vitamin E Moisture Cream (old formulation): 5
Burt’s Bees Baby Bees Buttermilk Lotion: 4
Burt’s Bees Marshmallow Vanishing Cream: 3 (Also this looked really thick, like marshmallow flush you eat).  It turns out there are some Burt’s Bees moisturizing products that rate under 2, but they didn’t have them at Lunds.
Nature’s Gate:  I don’t remember which product exactly but they don’t have any moisturizer’s rating under 3.

We may have looked up more products but you get the picture.  I went away empty-handed.

That Monday I made my one and only Christmas shopping trip to a mall, which was a miserable experience.  I stopped by the Origins counter to pick up Spot Remover Blemish Treatment (I’ll do a post on that later).  Now, HERE IS HOW IT HAPPENS.  I was tired of having a dry itchy face, tired of waiting to find the right product, and tired of shopping.  I was standing in front of the very tempting Origins display when I impulsively purchased the Origins Balanced Diet Lightweight moisture lotion – 1.7 fl oz. for $26. 

And guess what?  Origins products aren’t even in the database.  The package does say, “Forumlated WITHOUT: Parabens, Phthalates, Propylene Glycol, Mineral Oil, PABA, Petrolatum, Paraffin, DEA, Synthetic Color, Synthetic Fragrance, Animal Ingredients” which is a good start, but there are 61 ingredients listed on the package.  I’m not going to punch them all in right now, but that seems like a lot and I don’t really get what they all are (myristyl myristate? ethylhexylglycerin?)  I guess I’ll do so when I get closer to the end of the pretty little green bottle.

Meanwhile, it is a new year and I resolve to continue my battle against Product Overload.