How to Make Deodorant for Sensitive Skin

Last week, two things happened. First, I ran out of deodorant (the mineral-salt spray-on kind), and second, my cousin mentioned on Facebook that his wife was making deodorant that evening. I was inspired–obviously, I should be making my own deodorant.

The internet offered up a multitude of recipes, almost all of which were some combination of coconut oil, baking soda, and either cornstarch or arrowroot powder. Which sounds mostly good, except that I am a delicate flower, and my poor, sensitive skin hates…well, pretty much everything. Sun burns me alarmingly quickly, scented products give me hives, soap leaves me feeling like I’ve been sandpapered, deodorant often leaves me feeling dried out and itchy. Sexy, right?

So I based my deodorant on the many available recipes, but tailored it for those of us with picky skin.

Ingredients. We’ve got coconut oil, grapefruit essential oil, baking soda, cornstarch, apricot kernel oil, and vitamin E. This is sort of a flexible recipe. You can use whatever essential oil you’ve got around or, really, you could leave it out. It’s such a light scent that I don’t think it’d be terribly noticeable if it were gone. If you have yeast issues, you should use arrowroot powder instead of cornstarch. Thankfully, that’s not an issue for me, so I went with the cheapo cornstarch. For the vitamin E, you can either puncture a few gelcaps and squirt out their insides, or you can buy a little bottle of vitamin E at some pharmacies.

Put 1/4 cup cornstarch, 1/4 cup baking soda, 1 Tbsp apricot kernel oil, 1 tsp vitamin E, and 6 Tbsp coconut oil into a bowl. I cheated and microwaved my coconut oil for about thirty seconds, and I’d suggest that you do, too–sure, you can mush it around in the bowl and it’ll eventually warm up and melt, but why bother? It’s also a lot easier to measure it when it’s at least semi-liquid.

If you happen to have it, I’d add some tea tree oil (maybe 1/4 tsp), as well, since it’s an antifungal, but I didn’t have any and it was too late to go to the store, so whatever.

Anyhow, all that stuff in a bowl, and start mixing. If you haven’t melted (or fully melted) your coconut oil, it’ll take a minute or two before things start to get mixy, but it’ll happen.

And, tada, you’ve made the most delicious cream cheese icing you’ll ever taste!

Okay, no, but it looks like that, doesn’t it? I love cream cheese icing.

Now would be a good time to add your essential oil. Like I said, I used grapefruit, and a fairly substantial amount of it. I keep seeing recipes calling for ten drops, and I can’t imagine that ten drops would do anything to a batch of this side. I ended up using probably between 1/3 and 1/2 of a teaspoon, and the deodorant has a very light scent–it’s noticeable if I stick my nose into the tin, or get right up in my armpit and sniff, but other than that, I don’t notice it at all.

Once you’re all mixed in, let it sit for a few minutes–the coconut oil will be really soft right now, which (sort of unexpectedly) makes it rather difficult to effectively package this stuff. Five minutes or so in a coolish room ought to be sufficient. Scrape the deodorant into a container, and you’re good to go. This made about 3/4 of a cup and filled four 3-Tbsp tins that I had. (Three are in use, and one’s in the freezer to see how it holds up in storage–I’ll report back in a few months.)

This makes a really nice and surprisingly effective deodorant. It’s a little easier on your skin than a lot of recipes out there, since it has more oil and less destinking-and-dessicant stuff in it. It also has the skin-soothing and rejuvinating properties of vitamin E and apricot kernel oil, as well as the moisturizing coconut oil. We’ve been using it for about a week now and have no complaints. It’s even stood up to the sweaty man test–Nick, who’s pretty stinky, has been wearing it, and it’s held up over long walks, gardening, and yard work…all with less smell than our previous deodorant choices have left us with.

I don’t know that you’ll save a ton of money doing this (my coconut oil was pretty expensive, though if you buy it in quantity or online the price drops dramatically), but it’s effective and doesn’t make my armpits hurt, which makes it worth it in my book.