Frugal Beauty Tips

Let’s face it, beauty products are expensive. Keeping up with all the new trends and the lotions and potions that come out is time-consuming and can drain your bank account quickly. Sometimes it pays, in more than one way, to go back to nature to keep ourselves beautiful. You might be surprised to find there are many items in your pantry that you can incorporate into your beauty routine.

Here are 5 simple household items that can be added to your beauty routine:

1. Baking Soda

Baking Soda has so many uses. It’s great for cleaning your sink and other areas of your house, but did you know it can be used on your body too? Have product build up in your hair? Use baking soda to help remove the product and reveal a clean scalp. It’s easy to make a baking soda rinse. Just put some baking soda in the palm of your hand, mix in some water until you have a paste and massage it into your scalp. Easy and much cheaper than some so-called clarifying shampoos.

There are also some people who say you can use a paste of baking soda as a facial scrub. I have tried this and it seemed to work but I’ve read other articles where the baking soda can cause tiny tears on the skin which can later lead to skin problems. Since baking soda is highly abrasive, I tend to believe this. If you try this, try it at your own risk, I don’t recommend it.

2. Olive Oil or Grape Seed Oil

Both of these types of oils are healthy fats you should incorporate into your diet. They are also good to use on your body. Rough hands or feet? A small amount of oil goes a long way to soften your body. Making your own facial scrub? The oil makes a great carrier for the sugars in the scrub. Do you have oily skin? If so, try out the oil control method for clearer skin. This method basically uses oil to take oil out of the skin since, well, oil is attracted to oil. You can find more information on The Oil Cleansing Method website.

3. White and Brown Sugar

As mentioned in tip # 2, you can make your own face and body scrub fairly easily. Both brown and white sugar work to make a frugal exfoliating scrub. Mix white and brown sugar alone or together with some olive or grape seed oil and you have a wonderful and inexpensive scrub. I have mixed in essential oils and made wonderful facial scrubs that have helped clear up my skin.

4. Witch Hazel

Witch Hazel is a great toner that can be used with other items in the pantry to make customized facial toners. Mix witch hazel with rose water and essential oils to create inexpensive toners. If you have oily skin, mixing a few drops of tea tree oil, lemon oil and ying yang oil with the witch hazel creates a customized toner for your skin.

5. Water

I know you have probably heard it before, but drinking enough water throughout the day really does help flush toxins out of our body and keep our skin clear. It can also help you avoid overeating because many studies say that hunger pains can actually be confused with dehydration. Don’t like plain water? Try adding lemon or lime for an extra bit of flavor. I like to drink water with crushed ice for something different.

It’s easy to use simple household pantry items in your beauty routine and create customized solutions for your skin problems at a reasonable price. While you can’t do this for every single beauty item, you can make a significant impact on your budget by using these tips.

The Author:

Jenny Kerr is an expert author, consultant, blogger and social media professional. She loves living a flexible lifestyle and spends most of her time reading, gardening and trying new recipes she has cooked from scratch. Jenny is passionate about helping people save money and blogs about it on her Jenny Pincher site. She has taught her self-developed “Basics of Budgeting” course throughout the St. Louis area.