My Whole Nontoxic Story and the Top Swaps We Use In Our Home (Including the Free Ones!) | Ep. 148

0:00Learning To Mom:Okay, before we get into any of this episode, I need you to know two things about me. And I need you to hold both of them at the same time. Thing number one, we prioritize non-toxic products in our home. We have done the swaps. We have done a lot of swaps. At the same time, thing number two, if you hand me a can of Pringles or some Oreos, I will absolutely destroy them. I will eat the whole thing. I'm not kidding. Because we don't buy them at my house. So when they are presented to me, I will be enjoying them. And I don't feel bad about it at all. So if you've ever avoided an episode like this, because you just assumed it was going to be like 40 minutes of someone making you feel bad that you don't have a reverse osmosis system in your home, stick with me because that is not what this episode is.

1:04Learning To Mom:Today, I am telling you my whole story of where my interest and passion for living a cleaner life comes from, plus all of our favorite swaps, including the ones that cost absolutely nothing because I think that that is actually the most important. I'm also going to get a little bit spicy about my thoughts about crunchy culture because I do have some hot thoughts. So let's freaking do it. Hi, it's Layla, your official mom friend, welcoming you to another episode of the Learning to Mom podcast. Here we discuss all things motherhood so you can be empowered and educated without feeling overwhelmed.

1:47Learning To Mom:Each expert guest, including myself, comes with their own perspective and background. So please note that the content present in this podcast is designed for general educational purposes only, and is not a substitute for personalized professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. You're about to get a lot out of this week's episode, mom friend, so let's get right into it. This episode has been a long time coming. I get asked a lot of questions in my DMs or in real life after basically like every crunchy adjacent guest episode. Like Layla, how did you get into this? Where do I start, especially on a budget, get a lot of questions like that.

2:24Learning To Mom:And so I've realized that I've never actually sat down and told you the whole story. You've gotten little pieces of it scattered across a hundred something episodes, but never really the full thing start to finish. But I do want to set the table real quick before we start, because I think this matters just kind of start, like have some framework or foundation that this is not a checklist. I am not grading you. I do not freaking care. You do not need to finish this episode and go throw away everything under your kitchen sink, okay? In fact, I would specifically tell you not to do that, and we'll get into why, because I do believe with my whole heart that everything has a cost.

3:08Learning To Mom:And this is going to sound so cliche, but sometimes the cost isn't money. I think all of this comes down to bandwidth. So take what serves you today, leave what doesn't, and know that the rest of it will still be here when you are ready. I did not create that expression, but I absolutely love it. And I think it's super applicable today's conversation. So if you had told me years ago that I'd be the person reading ingredient labels on laundry detergent and being relieved when I walk into someone else's home and it's fragrance free and they don't have any candles or wall plugins, I probably would have laughed because years ago I had other priorities.

3:57Learning To Mom:But when I look back, the truth is, is that this journey of prioritizing non-toxic living started way like long before I became a mom. And it actually started before I could read. So if you're new here, you might not know this about me, but I grew up on a little hobby farm and I grew up with a brother who had severe allergies, like serious anaphylactic to multiple huge food groups. And this was back in the day before there were allergy friendly brands. So my mom basically had to make everything from scratch. So everybody else's mom was tossing whatever into their grocery cart, right? There's all those reels that's like, I'm a 90s kid and I lived off of Cheez-Its and I don't know.

4:49Learning To Mom:I just cannot relate on any level. But that wasn't necessarily because we were like crunchy. That was because we could not eat them or my brother wouldn't be able to breathe. So my mom was like standing in the aisle reading labels way before it was cool, before there was an app for it, before, you know, before it was like trendy, even she was doing it because she had to, because of our family, like we shopped at this at the health food store. And I need you guys to understand that the health food store back then was not what it is now, okay? This was not a beautiful Whole Foods with a smoothie bar and good lighting.

5:40Learning To Mom:It smelled like a vitamin store. And recently I was talking to my mom about this and she was like, remember how da-da-da-da-da store had squirrel? That was one of the meats of the health food store. Like literally imagine if Whole Foods was like, you're in our squirrel section. That's not the vibe. But as a kid, I did not appreciate this. Absolutely not. We were what is referred to as an ingredient household. That childhood gave me such a strong foundation that I didn't even know I was getting. Like reading a label was never intimidating to me. And then growing up on a farm on top of that, being outside constantly, being connected to where food comes from, watching things grow.

6:35Learning To Mom:I think that planted something in me too, that like food came from somewhere. It doesn't just appear in a package. So again, that's just the foundation that kind of like said the path for me. But I do want to be clear because I think that that this part is important, that having that foundation did not mean I came out of my childhood as some perfectly crunchy adult. So then the moment that I personally got invested in health, like really invested, the thing that took me one step further down this whole non-toxic journey happened in college. And it came about because of my acne. Now, if you've been around this podcast for a while.

7:18You have heard me mention this, that I struggled with acne. Started in middle school, it was really bad and it stuck around for years through college.

7:26Learning To Mom:And if you've dealt with acne, especially as a girl, you know that it messes with your confidence in a way that's really hard to even explain to people who haven't. But I mean, there was literally like for a very long stretch of my life, I didn't feel comfortable leaving the house without makeup on, I would physically cover my face in public with random objects, like trying to hide behind a water bottle or my mom or my own hands, like pretending I'm coughing if I see someone down the store, like just trying to cover because my confidence was so low that I didn't even want to look at myself in mirrors.

8:05Learning To Mom:Like I avoided mirrors because I felt more confident not knowing what I looked like. I heavily edited every single photo before I posted. I wore full coverage makeup all the time, just trying to cover it up. That started in middle school. Yeah. Like once I was allowed to wear makeup, I went like full send. The full coverage lasted until, you know, through college, which by the way, was making the whole thing worse because my skin literally could not breathe under all of it. And then I used all these harsh chemicals like makeup removers and really harsh toners to try to get all the makeup off. But then all of those products were just stripping my skin even more.

8:48It was just such a bad cycle. But fast forward, bad acne, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

8:55Learning To Mom:Now I'm late into college and my acne came back full freaking swing. But this time my instinct wasn't to go find a stronger prescription. My instinct was, okay, what is going into my body? I can cure this based on inputs. So I dove into my diet. And when I say dove, I mean, I mean dove. I tried everything under the sun. I went gluten-free. I stayed gluten-free for almost eight years. And even gluten-free wasn't cutting it as much as I had hoped in college. So I went to paleo and then I went to the whole foods diet. But eventually it was a combination that did it. So like healing my gut, lowering my stress and switching to non-toxic skincare and makeup that actually supported my skin instead of stripping it, my skin cleared up.

9:46Learning To Mom:But that whole season really taught me or showed me like even with all the trial and error and all the dead ends, it taught me that my body was responding to the inputs because it did improve a little. That was just like another turning point for me. But I didn't know then that that was only another like step in the journey because everything that I had done up to that point was about my body and it hits completely different when it's your kid. So fast forward years and I become a mom. We had our oldest and I knew that something was wrong. Around six weeks old, some symptoms started showing up.

10:29And the biggest one was the baby acne.

10:32Learning To Mom:And as someone who struggled with acne for years, I just gave you my whole spiel about it. It was pretty alarming or like the Lord used that specific sign to point us on this path because he knew that that would be something that I really took notice of because I obviously had this like history with acne. So I did what I do. I went and I researched baby acne. I looked at a million pictures and I just kept coming back to the same conclusion. And that was that this was not normal baby acne. Something was wrong and I knew it. But even when I brought it up to the pediatrician and then even a second pediatrician for a second opinion, they both basically told me like, no, this is just a severe case.

11:25Learning To Mom:It'll clear up on its own. I'm so sorry. This is from the mom's hormones fluctuating and blah, blah, blah. And I was like, no, I basically said, screw this. I'm going to figure it out myself. I suspected everything because the first thing that I thought it was, was our laundry detergent. like one by one every single product in our house went under the microscope but it was essentially like for for a few weeks there nothing in our home was safe and I was willing to like burn it all down and switch it all over because I was so desperate to get to this root cause of her symptoms and this is where I really fell down the rabbit hole because I was sitting there I'm sitting there at like 2 a.m.

12:13Learning To Mom:I'm reading ingredient labels. I'm in the Reddit threads. I'm in the Facebook groups. I'm on every crunchy blog you can imagine learning how this everyday stuff, stuff I've used my whole life, and I never thought twice about it, irritates your skin, messes with your hormones, raises your cancer risk, like the whole nine yards. I lost so much sleep for weeks because when your baby is hurting and nobody can tell you why, I don't even know how to describe what that does to you as a mom, but you go into full-on detective mode and you will turn over every single rock in your house to find the answer.

12:54And that is what we did. We basically purged the whole house. I'm not exaggerating. That's the season that, you know, fragrance left our home for good. Like, like I literally threw away our candles. We swapped the cleaning supplies, the deodorant, makeup, laundry detergent, swapped literally anything we could.

13:12Learning To Mom:And I did more research than I have truly ever done in my entire life. And I landed on a dairy allergy. So because I was breastfeeding, I cut out dairy out of my own diet. So I was dairy free for 15 months while she was breastfeeding. And if I'm remembering right, it takes about two weeks for dairy to fully leave your system. And in those two weeks, our child started having bloody diapers. There was actual blood in their stool. And that was the moment that the pediatrician finally took me seriously and went, oh, oh, you might be right. Yeah, this is not, that's a big warning sign and referred us to a pediatric GI doctor.

14:01But by the time that we actually got in to see him, Derry was completely out of both of us and their skin was clear.

14:09Learning To Mom:But I had all my receipts. You can believe me. I showed him the pictures of the diapers, the pictures of their skin. He asked me more questions than I've ever been asked in my entire life. And it was official. He was like, yeah, she's allergic to dairy. Here's what you need to do. Here's the next steps, blah, blah, blah. So technically was tearing our entire house apart. The thing that fixed it? No, but I would do it all again, a hundred times over because it was that season. That is the moment that like non-toxic living stops being this thing that kind of annoyed me and became something I take very seriously for my whole family because of everything that I learned in the research while I was trying to figure out what it was.

14:57But once you just like learn these stats and these research and it's just like, holy crap, I can't go back, right? Because everything that ends up, everything we use in

15:08Learning To Mom:our home, everything that I put on my body even ends up on their bodies too. That was probably the biggest turning point. But the reason I'm including this in this episode is because birth was another huge point in my story. Once I started questioning the default in one area, I started questioning the default everywhere. The products, the food, the medicine cabinets, all of it. Hosting this show has basically been a multi-year education from hundreds of experts, and you guys have been getting it alongside of me. We've literally been learning to mom together. And I have been changed because of these interviews.

15:48Just absolutely freaking crazy. So that's the story. I hope that painted it in a picture. But that's my whole story. And now kind of moving into my crunchy culture hot take that I mentioned at the beginning.

16:09Learning To Mom:uh i have so many of these one is that i just like really truly don't give a crap about what anyone else does one of my best friends like feeds her kids i mean literally has like a snack drawer it's like from heaven right like i'm so jealous it's awesome like this whole snack drawer of Cheez-Its and Pringles and what are those little muffin things? So good. But like not how I vibe, right? And I don't freaking give a crap and I don't give her crap about it because it doesn't matter. Like she can do whatever she wants. She's the mom and I can do whatever I want. And it's just so annoying when people like make comments and stuff.

16:54Learning To Mom:And that is why crunchy people used to really annoy me and well they actually still do because when people would I mean people would talk to me about non-toxic living and my eyes would like glaze over so fast and then even today even as the girl recording a whole episode about her non-toxic swaps it still annoys me depending on the tone and the person because crunchy culture can be so freaking competitive you have seen it I'm it's everywhere it's just constant one-upping it's like someone mentions that they switch to a clean deodorant and someone else has to jump in with oh I like this brand so much better and I tried that one but it has whatever ingredient in it or oh we actually make ours at home like you buy organic and then someone raising their eyebrows and they're like is it locally grown?

17:54It just feels like it has stopped being about health and it's started being a competition with a freaking scoreboard to prove ourselves as, I don't know, the queen of crunchiness

18:09Learning To Mom:or something. And it's so annoying. So when someone makes a comment, like the ones I just mentioned or like the thousand other comments, I just stay quiet. Like I'm someone with a really pretty low toxic house. I have this pretty crunchy podcast. We've made pretty unconventional medical decisions, but I just stay quiet when someone makes a comment like that because I am not interested in playing the competition one-upping game. It annoys me so much. It's the one-upping. it doesn't make anybody healthier. It just makes us, it makes moms feel like they're failing at one more thing. And that's not what I'm trying to do here.

18:52Learning To Mom:That's not the vibe of this podcast. So let me just show you my scoreboard. Since we're being honest, you already know about the Lake Pringles and the Oreos. Here's another one. If I'm asked to bring a meal to a family reunion, end and I know I'm already going to be maxed out packing the kids for a road trip and being out of our house for that long. I am not making that meal from scratch. I'm bringing the bag of store croutons, whatever. And I will set that item that I was tasked to bring on the table with peace in my heart because it is all about bandwidth and what you can handle. I think we'll all be okay if we have an unhealthy weekend.

19:36Everything has a cost. And as I've said, sometimes the cost isn't even money. It's mental bandwidth.

19:43Learning To Mom:And I don't know about you, mom friend, but many times I don't have much mental bandwidth left. A from scratch meal has a cost. And that week, the cost is my sanity. And my sanity is worth more than making the mashed potatoes at Thanksgiving. I don't know, like a perfectly clean stack situation at the lake has a cost and the cost is being the stressed out family at the lake. It's not worth it. I'd rather be 90 % consistent at home where I control the inputs and where my family actually lives our daily life and be completely relaxed, even indulging everywhere else. So that's my permission slip to you officially.

20:23It's all balance. The one moms upping each other on the internet or even in person are not the standard.

20:32Learning To Mom:Okay. Wow. That was fun. I'm glad I got that off my chest, but talking about some swaps, cause I know, I mean, the amount of questions that I get in my DMS about swap. So I'm going to walk you through what we actually use. But before I do that, two quick things. One, this is not an exhaustive list. If I named every single swap we've ever made, the episode would be four hours long and a total link overload and nobody wants that. So this is just some of my favorites. And two, do not try to do all of these at once. Remember the bandwidth rule. Pick the one that bugs you the most and start there. Okay, and I want to walk through this in the order I actually think about it, which is like in the order, sorry, that I think is the most important to prioritize.

21:23And that is what you put in your body first, then what you put on your body, and then what's around your body.

21:29Learning To Mom:But for the majority of us, we have to be really mindful from a budget standpoint and having that mindset to prioritize which swaps first and then next is helpful. So let's start with the big one. What goes in your body? The food. Obviously, what you put in matters first. So for us, that means leaning into organic, whole foods, real ingredients, staying away from seed oils, sticking with grass-fed meats, you know, low processed food. If it is processed, making sure that it has like clean ingredients, that's not to say that we are 100 % clean. If you look into my pantry right now, I'm sure you'll find stuff that's not like 100 % But for the most part, that is what we do in our home.

22:20This flows like right into another swap of the kitchen because it's not just what you eat. It's what it's cooked in and what it's stored in, the water you're drinking all day long. So we swapped our cookware to non-toxic. Getting rid of the old non-stick stuff was a big one for me because that's literally what your food is cooking in every single day. So we use glass Tupperware instead of plastic. We actually don't have anything plastic in our kitchen at this point. No plastic cutting boards. Those shed microplastics straight into your food every single time you chop anything, by the way. No plastic cups.

23:00None of the kids' stuff is even plastic. If you're wondering what we do about our kids' stuff, fair question. They use stainless steel for everything. Bowls, utensils, their water bottles, their plates, forks. For coffee, we swapped out our conventional coffee maker for a glass Chemex for drip coffee. But with the Chemex, the only thing that my hot water ever touches are glass and a paper filter. So big win. We have also swapped most of our use from our microwave to our Wonder Oven by our place. I am obsessed. It's like a second oven. Oh, it's the best. And another thing that we've done in our kitchen is in our new house, we put in water filtration.

23:50That one's a bigger investment. I'm not going to pretend it isn't, which is why I'm not telling you to run out and do it tomorrow. But water is a thing that your family consumes more of than anything else. So I think that one is huge. And if a whole house filter isn't realistic right now, even a good counter filter is a real step. All right. That's kind of my take on things that go in your body, talking about what you put on your body. First up, this will surprise absolutely no one, but makeup and skincare. I use Crunchy. Your skin absorbs what you put on it so fast. This is the product category that is literally sitting on your body all day long.