Olive oil

I've just had a 'duh' moment regarding cosmetics, and can't quite believe it's taken me this long to realise...

In January I posted about finding an alternative to my expensive Lush/Body Shop cosmetics. Jon and I are on a fairly tight income, and spending £6 on a tub of face wash, £5 on a shampoo bar and £11 on moisturiser adds up to almost our weekly food budget for nothing more than basics...

Then I remembered what my mum used to do for me... When I was a teenager I had really bad acne - really bad. Oxytetracycline, the lot. She used to make an oil mixture for my skin and I would dutifully put it on my face every night before bed. I wasn't convinced that putting oil on my oily skin would sort anything, so carried on using my nice, tingly benzoyl peroxide based Clearasil. I now wish I'd trusted mum and stuck to the oil. Harsh chemicals + sensitive (i.e. acne-prone) skin = even more problems.

If you Google "wash face with oil" you will get a host of pages about how to cleanse your skin using nowt but oil, hot water and a flannel. A personal favourite site is here, which has lots of information on the method. This conversion has cost me nothing. I would dearly love to have healthy looking skin at some point in my life!

Then I remembered the no 'poo method of hair washing. That is, no shampoo. Or, as I read somewhere "what everyone did before 1970". I just need to find a couple of weeks where it doesn't matter what my hair looks like to get started, then it's down to bicarb and vinegar/lemon juice to clean my hair, and see how it goes.

I get grumpy when I realise I am SUCH a product of the consumerist time I live in, that I automatically believe that something I buy will answer my problems better than something simple. I will feed back how I get on with this - I hope simplicity wins out!