Detoxing Your Carryon and Living the Dream

Picture this: you’re packing your suitcase to go on a fabulous Mediterranean cruise. Little birds flutter in your window and help you fold your floaty beach cover-ups, your stylish-yet-comfy sandals, and your one dress that’s somehow appropriate for all occasions and yet never gets wrinkled. You toss in a couple classic novels you’ve always meant to read and a cashmere throw that will snuggle you to a peaceful sleep on the plane. You find your cute cosmetics bag without having to dig through your entire closet, and it’s full of beautiful, natural products that will moisturize your skin, soothe your spirit, and protect against germs during your journey. You lay everything out neatly on your bed and take a picture—finally, you’ll be one of those people on Instagram who jet-set around the globe without breaking a sweat! This trip is just a kickoff to your new career as a life coach and organization specialist! (And maybe magician, because how did those birds learn to fold clothes?!) Everything is finally coming together!

...And then you wake up and realize you have two hours to pack and be at the airport and who even knows where your suitcase is and whether the clothes you need are clean. Ah, yes, this is real life! Where your nicely-folded shirts have a party in your suitcase and end up at your destination more wrinkled than you thought possible. Where your cosmetics bag is full of lipsticks that always get on everything, samples of lotion from the last hotel you stayed at, and harsh-smelling hand sanitizer that you’ve heard might be bad for you, but there’s no way you’re braving an airplane bathroom without it.

Alas, we can’t help you with the wrinkled clothes (seriously—we’ve tried rolling, packing in plastic bags, sweet-talking, cursing...please send help), or get you to your flight on time. However, we do have a few suggestions for at least partly fulfilling the fantasy above by improving the state of your carry-on cosmetics—in ways that might just preserve your sanity on those holiday trips to visit the in-laws.

Protect with It Takes a Thief Soap and Spray

Hand sanitizers like Purel are used in hospitals for a reason. But for everyday use, they’re like trying to mow your lawn with a grenade—yes, they’ll destroy harmful bacteria, but they’ll also obliterate helpful bacteria and dry out your skin while making your hands smell like a doctor’s office. Our It Takes a Thief products are perfectly balanced in their germ-fighting ability, and—of course—all-natural. In fact, the blend of essential oils we use harkens back to the medieval ages, when a band of thieves used a similar blend to protect themselves from plague victims. Use the It Takes a Thief spray to cover your body, clothes, and linens with a protective mist, and It Take a Thief bar soap to wash away the day. If you’d like to learn more about our natural, antibacterial and antimicrobial bodywash, soaps, and sprays, check out this post!

Soothe with Healing Salve

We’re all familiar with Sad Purse Lotion—the small, stolen-from-the-hotel bottle with mystery ingredients, weird-smelling, covered in scratches, and waiting to explode at any moment. These are the lotions that most often go in our carryons, but they’re more harmful than they look. Wonder why these lotions smell like (fake) lemon verbena or gardenia for years? It’s because of the added parabens, which preserve the oils, but can be a harmful skin irritant. Our travel-sized Healing Salve is small enough to toss in your purse yet potent enough to soothe and heal dry skin and scrapes, naturally. And smooth skin is healthy, protected skin. (Bonus: it’s in a tightly-sealed jar, to lessen the chances of your whole purse getting Healing Salved.)

Replenish with Citrus Lip Balm

It’s a well-known fact that airplanes are designed to enact as much misery as possible on your body, not least of which is to slowly leach out all moisture from your pores while making you terrified to drink lest you need to use the tiny restroom during turbulence. While we can’t change the plane’s air quality, we can help soothe your chapped lips after your post-red-wine nap (no judgements here!). Our Citrus lip balm soothes and moisturizes your lips with a blend of almond oil, beeswax, Vitamin E oil, and essential herbal oils—a bit more appealing than your Chapstick or Carmex, which has a petroleum base derived from the same engine oil that’s powering your plane! And it’s energizing—a spot of soothing sunshine during your journey.  

Sleep Tight with Lavender Mist

Speaking of dry lips, here’s a supermodel travel secret: use an essential-oil infused mist to hydrate your face. The gentle, pure lavender oil in our Lavender Clean Mist is not just soothing—it makes your complexion dewy and fresh (and it’s a great under-makeup treatment, if you decide to freshen up in the airport lounge).

And it does double-duty: stale bus air, musty hotels, childhood bedrooms that still smell like the clouds of Clinique Happy we used in high school (sorry mom)...traveling is full of fun aromas! Sometimes you just want it to smell like home, and you want to sleep as well in your hotel bed as you do in your own bedroom. Use Lavender Clean Mist as a pillow spray to relax before bed, and as a Febreze stand-in to refresh your travel clothes!

Don’t they look pretty all laid out together? Maybe you could be that Instagram-star-life-coach after all...and still make your flight on time!

Now through Saturday, October 31 all items in our Travel Essentials collection are 20% off! Enter DETOX at checkout.