July Challenge: Stepping up the Beauty Routine

It’s July.  Do you know what that means?  Time for a new month-long goal at our house.

First I have to admit that last month’s challenge didn’t go so well.  I wanted to look up something new on Wikipedia every single day.  But with all the new mechanical and physical properties I was learning about flying a plane, I just wasn’t interested in trying to learn something else, too.   My June goal was a total failure.  I followed through seven out of 30 days.  Did anyone else try to spend more time learning little details?  How did it go?

On to July.  On to a new challenge.  I’m spending a little time each day improving my beauty routine.

face-washing

You can probably guess that it doesn’t mean waking up 30 minutes earlier to scrub and dry my hair and put on makeup.  Actually, I’m taking quite the opposite approach (not just because I prefer beauty sleep, either).  I’m wondering if maybe less really is more.  Our skin can absorb up to 60% of the stuff we apply to it.  So it hungrily soaks up the water, vitamins, and minerals we put against it.  And then our skin proceeds to suck up the potentially carcinogenic ingredients we’re rubbing against it, too.

Have you ever thought about how many chemicals and products you apply to your body just in the first hour of the day?

This month, I’m thinking about all the products that I apply to my skin and trying to cut back – both on the number of products and the amount I apply.  That means trying to use half the shampoo, half the lotion, and fewer soaps and products on my skin.  It’s an interesting experiment.  So far, I can’t really tell a huge difference other than the fact that my shampoo is disappearing half as fast.

You can probably guess that using simple products that I can understand like Plain Jane Skin Care products is high on my list.  So is reading this book:

green-beauty-guide

I’ve been poking through The Green Beauty Guide by Julie Gabriel for several months.  It has so much wisdom – from product suggestions to recipes and most importantly, answers to my questions about skin products, green washing (false eco-advertising) and, especially around this time of year: the topic of sunscreen.  Considering the book costs the same price as my favorite Burt’s Bees body butter, I think it’ll quickly pay for itself – especially with all the products I won’t need to buy any more.

What about you?  Do you have any changes that you’ve made to detox your beauty routine?  I need you to help me keep up to speed.

(Images from Flickr and Amazon.com)