Homemade Beauty: Dry Skin Scrub and Mask

Winter is famously rough on dry skin.  Mine is fairly parched most of the year, but becomes painfully dry during the winter--rough, flaky, red, and blotchy.  Dry skin is often also sensitive, and many products (even ones formulated for "sensitive skin") can irritate it further.  So, I've been hanging out in the kitchen.  The scrub recipe comes from my mom (also a dry-skin-sufferer).  It is quite simple--just mix a bit of plain sugar and enough olive oil to make a paste.  I take this into the shower with me and very carefully exfoliate my face.  Pressure is key here--very gentle circular strokes.  The idea is to polish away the dead skin, not sand off your epidermis.

I follow the scrub with a homemade mask.  I did a bit of research, looking at ingredients found in products formulated for dry skin, and I found that oatmeal, honey, and chamomile were mentioned frequently.  So, here is what I put together:

1 tbs brewed chamomile tea

1 tbs oatmeal

1 tsp honey

Mix the three ingredients together in a small cup and microwave 10-15 seconds.  Stir and let sit until it looks like the kind of oatmeal you would eat.  Apply to face and wait 30 minutes before removing.

I didn't want to be brewing chamomile tea every few days, especially if I only needed a tablespoon of it.  So I brewed two cups in a mason jar that I keep in the refrigerator.  When I want a mask, I just splash out a bit into a tea cup, add in the oatmeal and honey, and microwave.

The mask can be a bit tricky to apply--if the mixture is too runny, it will slide off your face; to thick and it won't spread.  While wearing it, you will look a bit leprous, but the results are worth it.  My face is smoother and less red.  I follow up with a good moisturizer (currently the Simple Replenishing Rich Moisturizer).

I really like the little jars that once held diced pimentos for containing the scrub.  What are diced pimentos for?  Glad you asked: check out the Pimento Cheese Recipe here.  Interested in other homemade beauty recipes?  Check these out.

Housekeeping Routines

I considered starting here with a little philosophical musing about housekeeping--I do, after all, specialize in domestic fiction and wrote my master's thesis on a novel called Recollections of a Housekeeper.  But, if you indicate that you are interested in housekeeping, people often suppose that you are very strange (I may be) and have a freakishly clean house (I don't).  So, I will dispense with (most of) the musing and get to the basics.  Most people do some housekeeping.  I am generally interested in how people do it. I think those manuals and descriptions from the 19th century on housekeeping practices (or domestic economy, as it was sometimes called) are fascinating.

My favorite modern-day housekeeping tome is Cheryl Mendelson's Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping House (Scriber, 1999).  The book is a wonderful reference guide, nearly 900 pages long with answers for nearly every conceivable quandary on laundering, polishing, laying out, and making up that you could imagine.  My favorite chapter is the first, in which Mendelson writes of her "secret life."  She writes, "An off-and-on lawyer and professor in public, in private I launder and clean, cook from the hip, and devote serious time and energy to a domestic routine not so different from the one that defined my grandmothers as 'housewives'" (3).  She goes on to describe those grandmothers, one of Italian ancestry and the other of British Isles descent who are equal in their passion for domestic arts, though they often conflicted on ideas of airing beds or ironing shirts.  Ultimately, housekeeping seems to be part of identity--how we do things tells us something about who we are and where we come from; but the purpose is unifying--we all seem to clean house because we enjoy having a comfortable, welcoming space in which to live.

So domestic routines both create comfort, and to some (myself included) are comforting in themselves.  When I was younger, I learned the nineteenth-century housekeeping litany from Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House books: Wash on Monday, Iron on Tuesday, Mend on Wednesday, Churn on Thursday, Clean on Friday, Bake on Saturday, Rest on Sunday.  While some of these activities are obsolete (or have become hobbies, rather than chores), the idea of having a list of daily tasks makes sense.  I have tried the other method--clean when it gets dirty--but have found it to be far more exhausting than a pre-emptive routine.  After much experimentation, this is now my weekly routine:

Monday: Clean the Kitchen, Buy Groceries
Tuesday: Laundry (Clothes)
Wednesday: Dust and Vacuum
Thursday: Laundry (Sheets and Towels)
Friday: Clean Bathrooms, Buy Groceries

These activities are, of course, supplements to the daily "neatening" tasks of putting away items and making beds and so on. This list is specific to my needs, as it's just my husband and myself in a small apartment.  I put the lighter tasks (laundry) on Tuesdays and Thursdays because those are usually teaching days for me.  My very least favorite task is planning meals--for some reason, my brain freezes up and I look with dread at the refrigerator and drag my feet on the way to the grocery store.  It has become somewhat easier since I go to the store twice a week now.  Instead of having to plan seven meals, I plan meals for Monday through Thursday, and then Friday through Sunday.

I don't always get through the week perfectly, but it is easy enough to catch up and Saturday morning is a good time to pick up any tasks that were missed during the week, but your whole day isn't spent in drudgery.

So, what are your domestic routines?  Any tips on making meal planning less painful?  Any thoughts on housekeeping as identity? 

Homemade Beauty

 I am a fan of beauty products that come from the kitchen.  The chemicals and what-not in most tubes and jars kind of freak me out, and my skin is on the sensitive side, so it's prone to freaking out, too.  A lot of my homemade stuff I learned from my mom.  And, actually, I'm not sure if it even qualifies as homemade, since there is no making involved.  For example, an egg yolk face mask is just that--beat an egg yolk and apply it to your face.  It seems to tighten pores and smooth skin.  I also like adding a teaspoon of baking soda to my hair in the shower once a month.  I keep a small Mason jar in the shower, toss in the baking soda, swirl in some water so that it's somewhat paste-like and work into my hair.  Rinse, then wash and condition as usual.  This strips out any product build-up and makes my hair super soft.

Homemade stuff usually also has the added benefit of being cheap--usually, I already have this stuff hanging around.  The other day, I needed a body scrub, so that I could apply sunless tanner.  I had seen a few recipes online, and decided to mix some stuff together and see what I got.  Here is my recipe:

2-4 tsp. brown sugar

2-4 tsp. white sugar

1 tsp. honey

1 tsp. olive oil

1 tsp. coconut oil

1 tsp. lemon juice

I mixed it all together in a small, clean jar that once held diced pimentos (see, recycling!).  Honestly, the results were amazing.  I tend to have dry, eczema-ish skin, and this stuff made it super smooth and soft.  If you are not familiar with coconut oil, check it out.  It is about the consistency of Crisco, a white solid at room temperature, but melts when you rub it in.  I use it for so many things, including a substitute for after-shower lotion, face moisturizer in the winter, lip balm, and I smooth some onto dried hair to tame frizz.  I got an enormous jar from a health-food store something like two years ago, but I have seen it now at Wal-Mart with other cooking oils.

  

Bolstered by my confidence in kitchen beauty, I decided to try another experiment: homemade hair lightener.  I have light-medium brown hair that I actually rather like.  I think the color looks a bit like oak wood, because I have very subtle streaks of lighter blonde throughout.  I was completely blonde as a toddler, and even after my hair turned brown around age five, it would still bleach out to a bright blonde in the sun during the summer when I was a kid.  I don't want to dye my hair--like I said, I like the color.  But, I would like to intensify the highlights that are already there.  So, this is what I mixed up:

1 cup strong chamomile tea (steeped approx. 30 minutes)

1 tsp. honey (dissolved in tea)

1/2 to 1/3 cup lemon juice

1/2 oz. John Frieda Go Blonder Lightening Conditioner

I let the tea and honey cool a bit, added the lemon juice and whisked in the conditioner (which should keep my hair from getting too dried out).  I poured it all into a spray bottle.  I tested it out during a long run last week, spraying mostly the front layers and the top of my head until my hair was fairly saturated.  I was out in the sun during my run for about 40 minutes, and when I got back my highlights were definitely more noticeable.  It wasn't a drastic change--I think the process is a gradual one--but my highlights were definitely blonder.  I keep this concoction in the fridge--I'm not sure if the ingredients go bad, but I don't want to spray moldy liquid onto my head. 

So, there you are: homemade kitchen beauty.  I can't guarantee the results, but if you try these, let me know how they work out for you.  And let me know if you have any favorite homemade beauty recipes.