How Crunchy is Crunchy Enough?

Sometimes being crunchy can be exhausting.  I mean mentally, not physically.  If you ever got a look at me, you'd know I was built to toil in the fields, I could use some more physical exhaustion of the crunchy sort.  But navigating the road to crunchiness (or maybe that should be the road of crunchiness?) can be a real pain in the butt.

Even when you pick your battles, or fight them one at a time, I constantly worry "is this enough?"  You saw my post about local vs. organic milk, and there are all kinds of ways of determining which foods are healthiest, but my biggest internal dilemmas seem to involve bath and body products.  I buy shampoo for my kids that's free of parabens, phthalates, and sulfates, but should I be aiming to make my own out of grass clippings and hand-rendered shmaltz*?  My deodorant is aluminum-free and naturally scented, but would I be better off scrubbing my underarms with a chunk of Himalayan rock salt?  

Ok, sarcasm aside, I do spend too much time stressing out over this kind of thing.  I could argue that my huge bottles of Pantene from Costco are sufficiently eco-friendly because one big bottle uses less plastic than several little ones.  And the fact of the matter is that three-year-old kids hate having their hair brushed, so if using some kind of not-100%-natural detangler helps keep QE's curls in order and my rage in check, it's worth a plastic bottle or two.

What's annoying is that the shvil hazahav is usually the most expensive option.  Either I can buy a ginormo-pack of Lever 2000 for a buck-fifty, or I can make a batch of soap from leftover latke drippings and bulk-purchased bee pollen for a dollar ninety-five.  Or I can buy a recyclable bottle of something free of harmful chemicals that makes my hair smell like the south of France and look like Beyonce's, for the price of my firstborn child.  Not that you'll ever see it thanks to the tichel/sheitel on my head, but still.  Someone is the personal care product industry needs to cut this pseudo-employed librarian some slack.

But there are also times where going crunchy isn't a huge deal, or is worth the money.  After a couple of years of fooling around with different products, I discovered all-natural shampoo bar that BSB has been using daily now for over a year.  For the record, he works in the pharmaceutical industry: using something that crunchy was kind of a big step, but it works better on his hair than anything else ever did and isn't especially expensive.  When my hugenormous amphora of Costco Pantene runs out, I plan to give a shampoo bar a whirl myself.  And some time I'll give you the lowdown on all the fabulous eco-friendly lip balms I've sampled.  I may even score a few goodies to give away to a loyal fan from my favorite crunchy and kosher businesses.  Then I'll be a genuine blogger, and not just a wannabe-crunchy dork who's good at making people think she knows what she's talking about.

*Note: I have a lot of respect for people who make their own body products, and even patronize some of their businesses.  I'm just being snarky because what good is a blog that isn't snarky?