Clean, Healthy, Beautiful: Homemade Face Wipes and Honey Lemon Sugar Scrub

One of the first "beauty" products I made for myself was homemade face wipes.  I use these every night to take off my makeup. They are convenient, easy and inexpensive, and I know what ingredients I am putting on my face, because I put them together myself! There are great instructions with lots of pictures over at WhiteHouseBlackShutters.com.

Here's how I make my homemade face wipes:

You need:
Select-a-size paper towels (Bounty, Brawny, and Viva are the best)
1 Tbsp. Coconut Oil
1 squirt of face wash or mild soap or shampoo
3 drops Lavender essential oil
2 cups water
Container that will fit half a roll of paper towels, with a lid that seals (mine is a Rubbermaid)

Cut the roll of paper towels in half with a large knife. This is easier said than done, but you can do it! Just keep sawing away at it until you cut it all the way through.  Place one of the halves in the container, cut side down. You'll just be using one of the halves now, so save the other one for next time.
Heat the 2 cups of water in the microwave or on the stove until steaming.  Add the coconut oil to the hot water and stir until melted. Add the face wash and essential oil and stir.
Pour the liquid into the container with the paper towels in it.  Put the lid on (you may have to press down and scrunch the paper towels down).  Turn it upside down.
After 5 minutes, take the lid off and remove the inner cardboard roll.  Your wipes are ready to use!

The coconut oil is so good for the skin!  These wipes make my face feel very fresh and soft. They're great for traveling, too. Just take out as many as you will need for your trip and put them in a ziplock bag.
These can also be adapted for baby wipes by using baby wash or shampoo instead of the face wash.  Or you can make cleaning wipes by just using a mixture of water and your favorite cleaner and/or essential oils.

Another homemade face product I recently made is my Honey Lemon Sugar Scrub.  I usually use a face scrub in the shower every morning, and I ran out of my super expensive kind, so I thought I would try making something to replace it.  Here's what I did:

You need:
1/2 cup sugar
2 tsp. honey
3 drops lemon essential oil
olive oil

I mixed together the sugar, honey, and lemon essential oil and added enough olive oil to get the consistency I wanted.  I put it all into a repurposed shampoo container because I didn't want to mess with scooping it out of a jar while in the shower.  So, I just shake it up a little, take off the lid, squeeze some out into my hand, then apply to my face.

A little warning here:  The first time I used this I thought I was going to end up with an icky, sticky mess.  It felt like it wasn't rinsing off. My skin is naturally oily, so I thought it might feel like a sticky oil slick all day.  It did not.  I dried off my face and it felt sooooo very soft! Not sticky and not oily at all!  Oh, and a really cool thing to note: If you leave it on your face for a few minutes, it is much easier to rinse off because the sugar grains dissolve.

This scrub is also great to use on rough elbows and feet. I love this stuff! Apparently my daughter Rebecca does, too, because it's quickly disappearing and I'm going to have to make another batch soon.

Clean, Healthy, Beautiful: Homemade Laundry Soap

Until a few months ago, I didn't know that I could make my own natural cleaning and beauty products.  The thought just never even occurred to me.  For several years now I have been slowly trying to phase out the harsh chemicals in our home.  For a while I was a loyal customer of a company that makes wonderful and very pricey natural products using tea tree oil, but they require you to buy a certain amount every month, and when we made some serious budget cuts last year (daughter in college...enough said) the super expensive tea tree stuff was the first to go.  So, out of necessity, I looked for some alternatives. I discovered that Pinterest has tons and tons of recipes for DIY cleaning, health and beauty products!  Who knew? (Not me!)  I now have a Pinterest board called "Clean, Healthy, Beautiful"  where I've pinned lots of recipes and ideas that I want to try.  I've already tried a few, so I thought I would share them here on my blog, just in case any of you are like me and didn't even know this could be done. (And also because my mom asked me for some of the recipes. Here ya go, Mom!)

One of the first things I tried was laundry soap.  I looked at lots of different recipes and came up with what I thought would work for me.  Here's what I tried:

You need:
1 bar of Zote laundry soap (I found this at Big Lots where I live, and I've seen it in Walmart in other places)
2 cups of Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda
2 cups Borax
1 cup Oxyclean or generic oxygen cleaner

Grate the entire bar of laundry soap with a cheese grater. I think you could also cut it into smaller pieces and grate it in a food processor, but I don't have one.  I grated it, and then ground it up smaller in the blender.  It worked much easier when I added some of the powdered ingredients to the blender, too.  Then I just mixed everything together.  I had a big gallon jar and it only filled the jar halfway, so I went and bought another bar of Zote (I think it was 97 cents) and made another batch.  It filled the jar perfectly.

This laundry soap is SO inexpensive, and it works great! You only need to use one tablespoon for each load! Yes, you read that right, just one tablespoon.  I made my double batch back in December, and it's maybe about halfway gone now in April, doing laundry for three and sometimes four people.  Also, I've read that this type of laundry soap is perfect for HE washers, because it makes hardly any suds.

Now for the fabric softener.  I decided to stop using those dryer sheets coated with nasty chemicals.  For fabric softener I use a quart of white vinegar with about 10 drops of lavender essential oil and a teaspoon of rubbing alcohol.  I add about one-half cup to each load in the little receptacle for fabric softener in my washer.  The rubbing alcohol helps the vinegar and essential oil blend together.  The essential oil and alcohol aren't really necessary, but I love the fragrance of lavender.  You can just use straight vinegar if you want, and once your clothes are dry they won't smell like vinegar at all...just fresh and clean.  This works great as a fabric softener and also gets rid of any leftover soap in the rinse cycle.  The only thing it doesn't seem to do is control static. I'm still trying to figure out what to do for that.  I've tried dryer balls, but they're not working for me either.  It's a good thing the weather is getting nicer, and I can start hanging my laundry out on the clothesline again!

Coming up next...Homemade Face Wipes