Gorgeously Green

Over the past year and a half, I've been educating myself a lot on ways to cut out nasty chemicals from my life, to be better for my body, and the environment. Once I learned what some of those chemicals you see in the ingredients of every day skin and hair care actually were (horrible, horrible stuff!!!), I went into my bathroom and got out every moisturiser and hair treatment and cleanser and fancy bottle of "make you beautiful" product I had, and threw them all out. It was HARD to do, at the time (cos god knows how much money I had spent on it all, and it felt like I should have taken it all to a hazardous waste disposal after knowing what was in it all!), but since then, about a year ago now, my skin as been the best it's ever been (my hair was also awesomely healthy, until I lost it all in chemo of course!). No more harsh chemicals, petroleum based products, alcohols, heavy metals drying it out, irritating it, causing break out after break out. I always half thought and joked that the big beauty companies put stuff in their products that make them feel good but keep your skin/hair bad so you have to keep using them... then I found out that it was true...
I recently bought a book called "Gorgeously Green", and it's an excellent book. It covers almost every aspect of (womens particularly) life and what stuff is bad for you, and the environment, and most importantly, what your other options are. It's the kind of book I think EVERY woman out there should go out, buy, and use as their day to day bible. It covers everything from beauty to cleaning and house care, to how to eat, shop and exercise in ways that are good for you and the environment. It never says "Don't Do This" without giving you an excellent alternative.
Anyway, it's inspired me to go through all of my cosmetics now and clear the bad ones of them out of my life, as I had done with my toiletries products so long ago. I had already begun replacing a lot of my make up with natural products, but just kept all my old chemical ridden cosmetics in a box up in the cupboard. Well, now I am going to throw them all out. I keep looking at them and thinking "Noooo, my pretties!", but when I think about what's in them, the thought of putting them on my eyes, on my lips, well, I can't bring myself to use them anymore. Over this past year I've had enough crazy chemicals in my body to last a life time, I don't need to be absorbing them every day through my skin. I can't even give the stuff away, because most of it has been used, and I wouldn't want to give it to anyone close to me, because it would feel like saying "Well I don't want to poison myself with it, but you can if you want!". So in the bin it's all going.
Of course, I am consoling myself to it but spending some money on shiney, new, organic, natural, pretty cosmetics to replace some essentials I'm chucking out ;) Which, after all, is half the fun!