The Advice Smackdown Is Back! So Let’s Talk Deodorant

Amalah, Haaaaallllp!

Now, I’ve always been a sweaty girl, so the search for a deodorant/antiperspirant has been long and fraught with failure. I THOUGHT I’d found my silver bullet with the click up style soft solids… but now face a new issue. They don’t work perfectly anymore- so I find both smell and moisture a bit of a concern- but more importantly I CAN’T GET IT OFF OF MY SKIN!!! It doesn’t wash off. It doesn’t scrub off. I have pits that smell like deodorant and have a waxy coating/buildup regardless of what I do! And if there is one person that knows her deodorants… it you, amiright, sista?! HELP ME AMY-WAN, YOU’RE MY ONLY HOPE!

Cough.

This thing still on?

Greetings, my beloved Smackdowneers, and apologies for my sporadic-to-practically-nonexistent presence lately. I plead a summer full of travel and low in childcare hours, then I broke my elbow and h-a-d t-o t-y-p-e l-i-k-e t-h-i-s which was slow and painful and full of terrors typos.

But now school has started (cue animated birds and dancing wine bottles) and I’ve been cleared to spend more time out of my arm splint and sling and back in proper typing form. Which means that finally, FINALLY, I will make a dent in the advice queue and answer your pressing questions about your baby/boobs/toddler/MIL-who-is-acting-like-a-baby-boob-or-toddler. Or whatever else you glorious people have continued to send me in my absence.

Today, though, we’re gonna tackle something really short, simple (and super Amalah-old-school): DEODORANT.

Or specifically, yucky waxy deodorant build-up. I’ve come across a few varieties that are more prone to sticking/clinging around than others, and here’s what I’ve done:

1.Dump some baking soda into a bowl. About a 1/4 cup should do it, but you can absolutely just eyeball it.

2. Start adding warm water, about a tablespoon or two at a time, until you’ve got a thick but wet/spreadable paste.

3. Spread said paste on your pits.

4. Gently rub the paste off with a wet washcloth — you definitely want a little exfoliating action here, but not too roughly since armpits are super soft, sensitive skin!

5. Rinse pits completely in the shower.

That’s always done the trick for me — I’ve read dozens of other suggestions, from vinegar to makeup remover to shampoo to apricot face scrub, but I’m personally leery of using anything that has irritation potential on such a delicate/sensitive patch of skin. The baking powder paste cuts through the waxy buildup and kills the perfume-y smell just fine and has never left me red/dry/itchy. (Note you might need to apply the paste a few days in a row if you’ve got really severe build-up.) Then I toss whatever deodorant was the culprit anyway, because I can can barely find time to apply a mask to my face as often as I’d like — ain’t got no time to be getting all precious about my pits.

Have you tried Certain Dri’s roll-on deodorant? Applied properly per the instructions at NIGHT, not in the morning? I found one of my go-to invisible solids was starting to let me down this summer and swapped in Certain Dri a few times a week and it really worked great. No heavy fragrance, no waxy build-up, and (since I was applying it pre-PJs and not pre-actual-clothes), no waxy white smudges all over my shirts and dresses because “invisible” solids are a lie that I continue to fall for, over and over again.

(And yes, I’ve also tried a ton of “natural” products and other homebrew concoctions. I wouldn’t usually consider myself a very sweaty girl, except when I used those and did things like “exercise” or “dare to sleep with all the covers on” or — in the summer, to simply “exist.” So those might not be super helpful for the OP.)

Photo source: Depositphotos/vadidak

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