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Health and Beauty The overall key to saving money is to examine what you buy and figure out if you can make it, trade it, or buy it used instead. I could certainly do more in the area of health and beauty, but remember every little bit helps. I also have to be sensitive to which changes my spouse is willing to make. Here is what I am doing. We make our own soap and use it for bathing, facial soap, and liquid hand soap. I recently began using this soap for my facial soap and have found it works great. It leaves my face clean and I don’t need to use moisturizer. If I feel my face needs a little something I rub some fresh aloe on it. In the future, I hope to make my own shampoo bars. I have also made homemade laundry soap, but I did not feel it did as good as job as I would like. I will probably try it again but for now, I am buying that kind of soap. Another area that I have cut back on is cold remedies. I now extract elderberry syrup with alcohol and add local honey, Echinacea, and Goldenseal to make my own cold syrup. Stored in the refrigerator, I always have access to some for a child ior adult coming down with a cold or a sore throat. I have found that this works so well that colds are nipped in the beginning and we have haven’t had a full blown cold around here for awhile. Recently I have suffering from chapped lips and little blisters on my lips. I tried all the store remedies and was getting no where. After spending money several different times, I finally whipped up my own remedy. I melted a little coconut oil in a small jars in double boiler set up with a pan. I melted some beeswax in another jar. In the coconut oil I added some herbs I had in my stash - comfrey, licorice root, goldenseal powder, and lavendar. After a little while I strained off the herbs and mixed the infused oil with the beeswax. My lips are making steady progress towards recovering. The key is to start using herbs slowly by researching a few here and there. Many of them are very versatile so you can find a few you like and keep them on hand. Don't go out and buy a lot because if you don't use them they will go to waste. Start slowly. There is alot more that I could do with herbs, but it takes time to learn. I research and study as I have time. I particularly like figuring out what herbs I can gather in the wild and use, which is how I started using elderberries. Don't forget you can also use herbs to treat your animals and pets. Research what is appropriate but I have used herbs to treat wounds.
In the future I would like to stop buying shampoo and toothpaste. I have begun researching these items and considering how to go about replacing these frequently purchased items. The best part about replacing these items is that it is better for our health and environment when we make our own in these categories. |
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