Separate utensils for making homemade personal care products?

May 7, 2017 11:18 AM

I've recently been making my own skincare products at home (body butters, shaving cream, masks, etc.) and in the process of mixing up these "recipes" I use the same bowls and utensils that I use for regular cooking. Is this OK or should I be using separate equipment for this?

All the ingredients I use are food grade where applicable (such as coconut oil, shea butter--apparently you can eat it, not sure you'd want to--, and bentonite clay), so I don't think I have much to worry about in the way of inadvertently poisoning myself. I thoroughly wash everything after use, but the shea butter especially tends to leave a film on everything and I wind up washing things a few times before it feels like they're back to normal. Should I invest in a separate set of mixing bowls, whisks and measuring cups/spoons for this endeavor? Part of the reason I started making my own stuff was to save money, and buying more kitchen equipment seems to defeat this purpose when I already have everything handy. Alternatively, is there a really effective way to get shea butter residue off everything? I currently use Dawn and sometimes Dr. Bronner's castile soap, however, neither can get it off in one go.

posted by Fuego to Health & Fitness (9 answers total)

Nail polish remover for shea butter residue.
posted by hortense at 11:30 AM on May 7, 2017

Best answer: You can definitely eat shea butter, it's used in some dishes in West Africa, where it comes from. I'd be less sanguine about regularly eating clay.

Have you tried rinsing the dishes with boiling or near boiling water? That should be sufficiently high temperature to melt the shea butter. I'd also recommend flushing your pipes occasionally with same to avoid it re-solidifying and eventually clogging them.
posted by solotoro at 11:39 AM on May 7, 2017 [1 favorite]

Best answer: You definitely don't need to use separate bowls! Everything you're using its fine to consume in much larger quantities than any of the residue you might wind up with could match.
posted by spindrifter at 12:02 PM on May 7, 2017

Best answer: As long as the bowls and utensils do not have scratches that may harbor ingredients / bacteria and you do a thorough job of cleaning, not a problem. Also, as long as you are diligent in researching ingredients -- "Oh, on sale! Wonder what this will smell like?" -- or using the kitchenware for guests with allergies.
posted by TrishaU at 12:22 PM on May 7, 2017

Best answer: You can use the same utensils. And, along with shea butter, bentonite clay is safe to eat (people do so with certain types of cleanses). Glass bowls would be the best, but metal is OK, also.
posted by quince at 1:00 PM on May 7, 2017

Best answer: I make cold cream with the same utensils I make food with, and it never occurred to me to worry about it. The process for making cold cream is almost identical to the process for making salad dressing, so I often go all assembly line and make those two things one after another, and I do the cold cream first because I'm more worried about salad dressing getting in my cold cream than vice versa. I hand wash everything in between, of course, but I don't clean them as fussily as I do when I'm done for the day.

I figure as long as the ingredients you're using are food grade and you don't have a bunch of fragrance lingering on your utensils, it should be fine. I don't use shea butter, but emulsified oils are pretty tough to get off. I just wipe them thoroughly, soak them in really hot water and detergent, then run them through the washer.
posted by ernielundquist at 1:58 PM on May 7, 2017 [1 favorite]

Best answer: You can safely eat bentonite clay, as quince mentioned above. Not recommending it, but residue on bowls/utensils shouldn't be a problem.

The main reason for having separate utensils is safety, but if you're working with food-grade or inert ingredients, that's not a concern. Next issue is whether the materials will flavor/scent the foods later mixed in the bowls. It's possibly you'll want to stick to glass/metal bowls & utensils to avoid this. With plastics, you may have to cope with discoloration and occasionally some amount of residue that's just impossible to reach with scrubbing or a dishwasher - if you have a bowl with deep scratches, you may realize that mixing soaps etc in it has made it unusable for food later. But until you run into a problem, you should be fine using the same kitchenware as long as you're not using anything toxic.

Plastic is porous; it'll absorb some of anything you put in it - that's why it's so hard to get some oils out of it, and why it stains if you mix, f'rex, spaghetti sauce in it.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 4:49 PM on May 7, 2017

Best answer: I make some of my own HBA and I use my regular cooking utensils. I do, however, stick to nonreactive cookware for melting & mixing, silicone, and glass. While my wooden spoons have wonderful character, that is not character I want to share with my hand lotion. I also usually have to do two washes (Dr. Bronner's or 7th Generation dish soap) to get the film off.
posted by carrioncomfort at 9:40 AM on May 8, 2017

Best answer: It's fine if your bowls and utensils are glass or metal.

I wouldn't use the same plastic bowls or measuring cups, spatulas etc because those are much harder to really clean; and can stain, transfer smells, etc.
posted by fingersandtoes at 10:05 AM on May 8, 2017