Trash Panda Cleans Up Nice: DIY Baking Soda Deodorant

You can buy Secret at the store for like three bucks, and Tom's of Maine for five. So why bother making your own deodorant?

I'll be honest, I tried this out of pure curiosity. I wanted to see if I could de-stink myself from stuff I can find in my pantry.  Turns out the answer is yes. It's also cheaper to make it yourself. The paste version takes all of two minutes to make, and the solid/stick version takes about half an hour.

Trash Panda's 2-Minute Paste Deodorant Recipe

Materials: 1 part baking soda // 1 part starch // enough lo-scent/hi-temp cooking oil to make a nice paste // max 10 drops of tincture or essential oil per cup of deodorant mix, if you're feeling it

Process: Just mix them together!

Skin feel: Grainy at first, then nice and smooth
Deodorizing power: Great for everyday light use, decent for heavy use
Ease of making: So easy, 2 min. prep time
Cost: $0.25/ounce (vs. Secret at $1/ounce & Tom's of Maine $2.20/ounce)

Trash Panda's Half-Hour Solid Deodorant Recipe

Materials:  

• About 1 part beeswax // 5 parts oil // 3 parts baking soda // 3 parts starch // max 10 drops of tincture or essential oil per cup of deodorant mix, if you want
• Double boiler or bain marie (or you can just use a glass jar or empty tin can or pyrex measuring cup in a pot of simmering water) // flexible molds, clean glass jars, or empty deodorant or glue stick containers to pour the deodorant into 

Process: 

• Get all your shit together before you start. You've got to watch the hot water & melting watch and you need to move quick when you pour
• Set up your double boiler, DIY or otherwise, and start the water on a medium-low heat. You'll want it at a low simmer, so a few little bubbles good, lots of big bubbles bad
• Measure out the wax and oil. A cup of sun-coco oil weights about 7 oz., which is about five times the weight of a 1.5 oz. beeswax nugget. Measuring out by weight is best, but volume is ok if you don't have a scale since the ratios don't need to be exact
• Pour the oil in your double boiler and warm it up while you cut up the beeswax (if you have to). Chuck the beeswax bits in the oil and stir every so often until they melt completely into the oil
• Keep oil/wax mix on low heat while you add baking soda and starch, otherwise it'll start to ste before you can mix it al in. The powders can get clumpy, especially the starch, to add them in slow and stir well
• Take the deodorant off the heat, mix in tinctures or essential oils now if you're feeling it
• Quickly pour deodorant into molds/containers. Don't freak out, you have a minute or two before it sets

Skin feel: Nice and smooth, the waxiness of the beeswax takes a little getting used to
Deodorizing power: Great for everyday light use, decent for heavy use
Ease of making: Not bad, 30-45 min and you’ll have most of the ingredients at your house 
Cost: $1.25/ounce cuz beeswax ain't cheap (vs. Secret at $1/ounce & Tom's of Maine $2.20/ounce)

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This is the stripped down core of all the baking soda deodorant recipes I could find online in a couple hours of googling. Baking soda for deodorizing, starch for thickening & softening & moisture absorption, and the low-scented food quality oil for keeping it all together and on your armpits. Plus beeswax to keep the solid version solid.

And holy shit, it actually works. I tried it for a couple of lazy summer days and I smelled great. After a full day of landscaping in 85 degree heat, I didn't smell great, but not much worse than I did when I used extra strength Mitchum. I'd recommend re-applying midday if you're out in high heat or doing heavy physical labor, but otherwise, not bad.

It worked pretty well on my feet too. I've got fairly sensitive skin (I tried powdering my pits with straight baking soda once, and boy did I get a rash), and this didn't bother me at all. It stayed on my skin and didn't get on my shirt. I didn't get any more staining in my pits than I already make myself because I'm a sweaty beast.

Using paste vs. solid deodorant was fine - it rinses right off, and if you decide to rub it into your palms it just keeps them from sweating a bit. Also clean up is easy as fuck with the paste and a pain in the ass with the solid. Another advantage of the paste is that it doesn't have a beeswax-y residue, which I'm going to have to get used to.  I used a low beeswax ratio too, so I'll have to see how solid it stays in August heat. Worse comes to worse, I'll keep it in the fridge.

Having deodorant in stick form is nice for portability and ease of application. The Pyrex-in-a-pot version of a double boiler plus the fact that my local hippie herb store had beeswax in 1.5 oz nuggets made made the process easy enough to be worth it. And there was the added bonus that I felt clever as fuck reusing a glue stick tube as a deodorant applicator.

VARIANTS: You can add a little essential oil or tincture if you want it to smell like something. Lavender & tea tree oil are typical, but anything that’s skin safe is fine and anything that has antibacterial properties will probably help. I used 15 drops of red cedar tincture in two cups of the solid deodorant mix.

I used the 1:5 beeswax to oil ratio of every balm recipe I've found. The solid deodorant recipes I looked at used a ratio of 1:3, which would keep things more solid but seem a bit waxy to me. My powder and wax/oil ratios come to 1:1, though the recipes I referenced used a 2:1 ratio. See Becoming Peculiar's Summer Deodorant or Houseful of Homemade's Deodorant Stick if you want to use the higher wax and powder ratios.

I used Suncoco Oil & corn starch because I had it in my cupboard. Coconut and sunflower oil are both nice for your skin and coconut oil is supposed to have antibacterial properties, but most high temperature/ low scent cooking oils (canola, olive, avocado oil, grapeseed, not-too-scented sesame, etc) would work just fine. Save the expensive stuff like jojoba for your face. 

Any food starch powder will do. The ones I listed are the easiest to find at most US chain supermarkets, but I’ve l seen tapioca starch used in DIY deodorant recipes as well. 

If either recipe bothers your skin and you can rule out reactions to the base oil, wax, starch or nice smelling additives you used, try reducing the amount of baking soda and replacing what you take out with more starch. 

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image credit: Racoon_in_Nisqually_National_Wildlife_Refuge - 3/23/2011 - photo by Steven Pavlov. cropping & text by Trash Panda DIY