A Natural Beauty Routine

At the beginning of July, I made it a goal to focus more on skin care over the month.  You can guess that I became so completely enamored with flying that I never quite got the chance to share my results with you.

Try counting how many products you use in your daily beauty routine – from lip balms to shampoos.  Then think about how many ingredients are in each of those products… and how many chemicals that might be.  No doubt you’ll find ingredients that look Greek.  The problem for us is that cosmetic industry has some pretty lax standards in the US.  When I looked up some ingredients that I didn’t recognize, most of them were actually banned in the European Union.  The exact same company will make two versions of the same product: one for North American consumers and one for European consumers.

A few big things changed at our house:

1.  We donated all the unused and sample products like hotel soaps that didn’t pass the ingredient check list.

Many organizations like battered women’s shelters are in constant need of products like these. So just like with our conversation about cleaning products you aren’t going to use, it makes sense to donate soaps, lotions, and feminine products you won’t be using.  It’s my favorite form of decluttering!

2.  We switched hand soaps.

We’ve been using Avalon Organics liquid hand soap for a while.  It passed our ingredient list, but we were going through it so fast.  I was curious to see how much our soap use would go down if I pulled the liquid hand soap from the bathroom and replaced it with our kitchen soap dish (a gift from my dear grandma).

Now we’re sold on Plain Jane Skin Care soap bars.  These soaps are handmade.  They use fewer resources than bottles of soap from packaging to processing.  And we quickly found out… they last longer.  I’ve always resisted soap bars because they dry my hands out.  Not our handmade soaps, which is a good thing because the last major switch was….

handmade soap dish

3.  I started using half as much of each product.

The biggest lesson of the month was realizing how much less I actually needed.  Less shampoo, less lotion, less everything.  I tried to get in the habit of using half as much shampoo each time I was in the shower, which was so hard to do.  I always thought I needed more with my dry skin.  Nope!  It turns out my skin feels healthier and less dry than ever.

So if I were to suggest one thing, it’s to use less.  You can still use the same products.  Just try half as much for a few weeks and see what happens.

What about your beauty routine?  Any tips for a simpler beauty routine?  Later this month, I think it would be really cool to start experimenting with more homemade recipes from this book or maybe a shampoo bar.  What do you swear by?