Thursday, June 2, 2011

Washing My Face With Honey

Not just a snappy title, friends, it be true :)

   In case it hasn't shown up on your radar yet, I'm something of a  hippie. I try to minimize the chemicals in my life and look to natural alternatives first, particularly where food and personal care products are concerned. Several years back I began to educate myself on the subject and, frankly, the amount and type of chemicals present in the products we slather onto our bodies every day is effing SCARY. If anyone's interested, I can make some great book and product recommendations :) The first thing I ditched was conventional deodorant back in, like, 2005, because I didn't want to be exposed to the parabens and Aluminum Chlorohydrate, both of which have been linked to breast cancer and Alzheimer's Disease *shudder*. For years now, I've been going back and forth between Crystal Roll-On deodorant (mineral salt-based), Avalon Organics Cornstarch-based, Talc-Free, Paraben-Free Baby Powder, and, when I'm poor, just plain old cornstarch, depending on what season it is. They've all worked just fine for me and I would highly recommend any of them.

  But enough about my armpits. As I said, the last two weeks or so, I've been washing my face with honey instead of a daily face cleanser or anything like that. My idea for this came from two places. Firstly, from my friend Sarah (who,coincidentally, is a fabulous cook and is starting her own food blog, Kitchen Witchery) when she told me a few years back that one could make a great face scrub by mixing a few spoonfuls of honey with a few spoonfuls of brown sugar. Super easy, super cheap, and it made my face incredibly soft :) I do this scrub every few weeks. Fast forward a ways to when I ventured into the blogging world and discovered an awesome environmentalist by the name of Deanna Duke, who writes two fascinating blogs, Crunchy Chicken and Green Goddess Dressing, the latter of which is devoted to personal care products, homemade and otherwise. It was on this site that I found a thread about washing your face with honey. Apparently this is hugely popular, with threads and posts and how-to's aplenty when one knows where to look. People swear by it. It has to do with the fact that honey has natural antiseptic and natural soothing qualities. I'd been doing the honey scrub off and on for ages, but for some reason, I never made the jump to ditching my normal cleanser and using honey exclusively. A few weeks ago I was at the Farmer's Market, and I had one of those *what the heck? No time like the present* moments and bought a small squeezy bear of local honey (though some people just use regular grocery store honey and it also works fine for them).

     Friends, I'm about two weeks in and I LOVE IT. My face is clean and smooth and soft and not the least bit dried out. No breakouts, no sticky residue, nothing. Really, you just use it the same way you would any facial cleanser. At the sink or in the shower, wet your face, rub it on, rinse it off  ( if you want it to be more of a mask, leave it for a few minutes, etc). You can mix it with brown sugar or cornmeal if you want it to be a scrub. My skin is not at all irritated, but I suppose if you have wicked sensitive skin I would just test it out on small area and make sure you don't break out. If you happen to be allergic to honey, I would avoid washing your face with it, but barring that, you're good, just use your head. I love washing my face with honey for several reasons:
1. It works, just as well if not better than conventional cleansers.
2. There is not one single scary chemical in it, it's basically about as natural as you can get.
3. It's CHEAP. The entire bottle of honey cost me $2.75. No joke. Two dollars and seventy-five cents. You're not going to find a conventional cleanser for that cheap, believe me.
4. Honey doesn't spoil. It will never expire or lose effectiveness, it will last indefinitely.To give you an idea, when several Egyptian tombs were opened and excavated, archaeologists found honey inside the tombs that was still edible.....yeah...this stuff lasts :)

So, give it a shot. It's cheap, it works, and it's chemical-free :) Me Likey:)

   In other news, I have left the daycare. My last day was last Friday. I really do want to dedicate an entire post to my experiences there, varied as they were. But for now, let me just say that I love all the children I cared for there with all of my heart and leaving them was indescribably hard. But it was time to move on. I did make some friends there also, which was lovely :) I have a new day job on the horizon that will be starting in July that I'm very excited about, details to follow shortly. For now I'll be planning my summer K.I.D.S Shakespeare Workshop that goes up the second week of July and enjoying this rare and wonderful period of  downtime. I do not want to squander these days. I want them to be a good balance of productivity and relaxation, and I want to strive to take them one day at a time and not get ahead of myself. Friday evening after my last day, I went out for ice-cream sodas with Mom and Mikey. On Saturday I went to the Farmer's Market, helped Mom plant the garden,went out to dinner with friends and saw more friends in a great local production of *Into The Woods*. On Sunday Mikey and I went to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Watchfire, which was awesome :) On Memorial Day we cooked out with our neighbors. On Tuesday I was productive in the morning and the spent the afternoon laying in the sun and running through the sprinkler in my backyard. Tuesday evening Mikey and I went out for our 10 month anniversary :) We went to a great restaurant on the shores of Oneida Lake, Borios. It was very hot that day, so we sat on the back deck overlooking the water and sat by the lake after our meal :) Wednesday I had a *Julius Caesar* performance in the morning, had a preliminary meeting with my new job in the afternoon, met Mikey for dinner and then went to Byrne Dairy for ice-cream. Today I was a good, productive little monkey, getting a lot done both inside and outside of the house, including going through my e-mail, deleting all the accumulated junk mail and organizing whatever was left into folders. It feels good to be getting things done that normally fall to the wayside when I have a day job occupying most of my weekdays.

  As these "days off" continue, I hope to be blogging more often, I have so much to say and, for once, I have time to say it :)

Love to All :)
Lynn

6 comments:

  1. and I want to hear every word :) I will have to try this honey thing! Sounds great! Good job on the blogs!

    ReplyDelete
  2. You know, it's that organic honey from New Zealand - Manuka Honey - that has been like MAGIC for my cold sores. What used to take 7-10 days with the strongest OTC meds I could find takes 2-3 with just this organic honey. MAGIC, I tell you ^_^ And a few months ago I had a wicked head cold, stirred a spoonful into my tea, and within an hour, I felt leaps better. As such, I may have to try the face washing, because my skin has been hella oily lately, and all the OTC face washes that are supposed to treat oiliness have salycilic acid, which is like putting sand paper on my poor delicate skin.

    I'll give the honey a test run and let you know how it goes ^_^

    ReplyDelete
  3. Please do!!! Honey has become one of my go-to cure-alls :)I'm always finding new uses for it :)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Honey is also great as a hair mask!

    I make my own face cleanser out of milk, tomato, some different oils, and apple cider vinegar, which works amazing. I do have to keep it in the fridge though. Honey is a good idea for when I travel.

    ReplyDelete
  5. In addition to the scrub, I use honey on any breakouts I have. First- soak a washcloth in a little hot salt water and use as a compress for five minutes or so. This dissolves the "head" of the pimple. Dab on honey, leave for 15 minutes to half an hour, gently rinse or remove with toner. Natural antiseptic/antibacterial, baby.
    My sister is right on the Manuka honey. Wicked expensive (we split a jar), but AMAZING. I use it sparingly for nasty breakouts/ingrown hairs.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Excellent!!! I'll remember that, my skin is reasonably well-behaved, but I do get the occasional PMS breakout *grumble*...And where can I find this Manuka Honey? I'm eager to try it :)

    ReplyDelete