Natural Face Cleanser... and Project Simplify is On!

Since I read about it in project 30 of "One Bite at a Time: 52 Projects for Making Life Simpler," I had been considering switching my skin care to something more natural.  I figured, the expensive Proactive stuff I was using wasn't winning me any complexion awards, so really, what was the risk?  The basics of it make sense to me, which are (1), that "like dissolves like," so the best thing to use to remove oil is another oil, and (2) that it was possible that I was stripping too much of the natural oil off my face, so it was actually producing more oil to replace what I was taking off, creating more breakouts.

So I did it.  I bought some tea tree oil and a bottle of castor oil at Whole Foods.  I'm thinking that you could probably get castor oil cheaper at a drug store, but I was there, they had it, so I just got it.  It wasn't too much, I'm thinking like $20 or $25 both; I bought the Whole Foods brand of tea tree oil, since the bottle was so much bigger.  I already had extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) at home.  The mixture I used was one part EVOO to three parts castor oil, with a few drops of tea tree oil.  

At night before bed I've been rubbing about a nickel sized amount all over my face, laying a hot, wet washcloth on my face until it gets cool, and then using that washcloth to wipe it off.  In the morning I either splash my face with water or I take a shower and just don't wash my face with any soap.  I was surprised that my face didn't feel oily at all afterwards, but really looked clean and felt soft.  I've still felt like I needed moisturizer after a shower, but I think that's mostly because I take showers way too hot, and it is just dry out right now.  

And I am happy to report that my breakouts seem to be less (knock on wood) so far.  That could totally just be a coincindence, so I'm not ready yet to totally say that this new cleansing routine is the cause.  But either way, it's not worse, and this is way cheaper than Proactive (for that $25, I probably have enough oil to make this for at least a year).

On another note, it's Project Simplify month!  As you may recall, this first week is is kids' stuff, but I say if you don't have kids, you can do your own "toys" (you know you have them - all the extra hobby junk that you aren't using, or your closet).  Check out Tsh's post to get started at Simple Mom; she is giving away a set of "Lay-n-Gos", which look pretty cool, if you want to post your before and after pics on her site.  I will post some pics of us doing this later this week here too.  Happy purging!