HOME by Natural Harry

HOME by Natural Harry is your down-to-earth guide to a resourceful, tox-free and waste-free home life. My 3rd recipe book with stunning photography by my friend Nikole Ramsay.

Seventy simple and sustainable recipes offer natural ways to care for every room in your home, and create a nurturing environment for body and mind.

A comprehensive collection of DIY recipes, tips, tricks and hacks for a calm, resourceful and tox-free existence, and a modern reference for anyone who wants to reduce their plastic waste and save money/the world at the same time!

Home by Natural Harry considers every room of the house (stain remover in the laundry, shower cleaner in the bathroom, dishwashing liquid in the kitchen) and presents alternatives to store-bought cleaning products, as well as a comprehensive chapter on body care (from toothpaste to shampoo to foaming hand wash).

A short list of ingredients is all you need to be able to make every single home cleaning and body care recipe in this book. Everything from shampoo to body butter and bath soak, bathroom cleaner to candles.

I have also included a handful of recipes for my favourite money and waste-saving kitchen staples including oaty seed loaf, coconut yoghurt and pickled veg.

Home by Natural Harry celebrates a slower, more frugal and thoughtful life.

With recipes, tips, hacks and a handy guide on stocking your cupboard,

Home makes it easy to do what’s good for your home, your body, your wallet – and the planet. Trust your ingenuity and make the leap.

A little story about HOME and how it came to be…

Home is so much more than just shelter. Home is a sanctuary, a space where you can think and recharge. Every little bit counts towards making a home feel nurturing, down to how you care for the space and the people who live there. That’s why the home cleaning and body products you use really matter.

I started thinking a lot about the products I was using at home about seven years ago when my partner, Fraser, and I were operating a small smoothie and raw desserts caravan. The more I began to appreciate how food was grown and processed, the more I wanted to eat food as close to its natural ‘whole’ state as possible, free of chemicals and preservatives. That passion for natural, plant-based living drove me to question the things I used every day. I was shocked to discover that synthetic preservatives were in almost all of my store-bought cleaning, home and body products, along with loads of ingredients I could not identify. Some were known to be harmful. I also learned that manufacturers can get away with a lot by using labels and terms that mask what a product contains. The simple word ‘parfum’ or ‘fragrance’ can be a front for thousands of chemicals that are known endocrine disruptors. These vague labels make it close to impossible for people to truly know what’s in the products they are using. No thanks!

I had read that our skin is our (second) largest organ, and much of what comes into contact with it is absorbed right into the blood stream. We already avoid spraying synthetic pesticides and herbicides on our food, so why do we spray products that are equally harmful in our homes? Or worse, use them on our bodies?

With this knowledge, I began to look for products that were free of chemicals with the power to hurt us and our planet. It was a tedious and often confusing task, made more so by a large amount of ‘greenwashing’ (conventional and synthetically fragranced products posing as ‘earth friendly’, ‘eco’ or ‘natural’ when they are, in fact, not).

I continued to research, slowly replacing most of my household and body products with things I found at local health food stores and online. I was certainly happy with them, but I also knew there was more I could be doing, not only for my bank account but also to reduce my consumption of disposable plastic bottles. What if I could avoid buying home, body and cleaning products in throwaway packaging altogether? What if I didn’t have to go to the store at all, or wait for an online order to arrive because stock had run out?

So I set about replacing it all with homemade, natural alternatives. That was a journey in itself, especially since I didn’t have this book to refer to!

I spent hours trawling the internet for information on natural ingredients and recipes that didn’t use questionable ingredients or turn your hair into a bird’s nest (yep, been there!). But I’ve created recipes that work wonders, and so skipping the store and making them at home has become my reality. With this book, it can be yours too!

The mission of this book is to offer you recipes, tips and hacks that are as accessible, simple, effective, practical, natural and as sustainable as possible. I am also happy for the opportunity to save you money and tedious trial and error!

I know that making your own home and body products can seem like a lot of work, but once you have the core ingredients on hand, your pantry will become your store and you can top up or replace your products without having to go out for them.

Within the pages of the book you will find a list of every ingredient I call for, as well as a little explanation about what it is, what it does and where to source it. You may recognise most or all of them! You may even have many in your cupboard already!

My wish is that this book will inspire you to take steps towards less waste and greater simplicity, creating a nurturing and healthy environment for your body and mind. It will arm you with everything you’ll need to create a calm, clean home.

Thank you as always for your support and for being such a legend. Every little tag or message of gratitude and enjoyment for the first 2 books was what spurred me on to create another for you.

All pre-orders made via the Natural Harry website will be arriving in your mailbox from October 29th, signed by me in a compostable box and a Natural Harry Bag! If you live outside Australia, You can click here to be taken where you need to go!