Something I learned from an Oprah show years ago was how to take care of my skin, but pay next to nothing. The guest was a dermatologist who said you can use common household products to take good care of your skin. My skin is pretty sensitive, and this stuff has worked extremely well without irritating me.

1. Wash your face with Cetaphil, warm water, and a washcloth. It won't sting your eyes and is fantastic as an eye-makeup remover. Since the price of Cetaphil has risen, I use the Equate version from Walmart for half the price. One bottle lasts forever.

2. Use peroxide as an astringent/toner.

3. If you need an oil-absorbing masque, use Phillip's Milk of Magnesia for 10-15 minutes on your face and rise with warm water.

4. If you need to exfoliate, baking soda has fine, even granules that work as well as some of the more expensive microdermabrasion kits you can buy from Mary Kay or Bath & Bodyworks.

5. I also buy the "Queen Helene" peel-off masques from my local grocery store whenever they go on sale for 99 cents a tube.

6. For a quick manicure/pedicure/body scrub, I mix plain white sugar with generic baby oil and scrub my hands and feet for a few minutes after a shower. It works well as a body scrub right at the start of a shower. You'll get an extra smooth shave as a benefit.

I do all of the above each week to keep my skin looking healthy, and it makes me look and feel like I went to the spa for just a few cents!

This is an interesting topic. I spend little on beauty products. I don't wear makeup (except for a little mascara and lip gloss if I'm going somewhere fancy) and I clean my face with plain neutrogena soap (the orangy colored glycerin bar that costs about $2.50). When my daughter had acne problems, the aspirin mask (mixing four or five aspirin with a little water to make a paste, applying for 10 minutes, and rinsing off) worked better than the pro-active solution.

I used to have a lot of layers in my hair and bangs. When hard times hit, I decided that I could no longer afford to go to the salon for trims every few months. I spent a year growing out my hair (not for the faint hearted; I had to wear headbands and barrettes nearly everyday) and it is now all one length. Now I only need to get the back trimmed of split ends every 6 months or so and my mom can do that seeing its just cut straight across. An unexpected bonus of all one length hair is that my gray hairs (mostly on the inside of the hair) are no longer visible like they were when I had layers.

I used to wash my hair with eggs as a teenager and it would be so shiny it looked like it was covered in gloss. One time I forgot and used hot water and the eggs actually semi- cooked in my hair!

I'll be excited to hear all the suggestions on this thread. I'll be 40 this October. I remember how I cried when I turned 30! Hopefully someone will have a frugal anti-aging solution.

i have been using the extra virgin coconut oil as a nightly cream since reading about it on here. LOVE IT!!! i have used the asprin/honey masks. LOVE IT but don't get it on your eyelids!!

__________________
Mabennett - Proud Mommy to a Yankee, a Tarheel, and a cheerleader

Keep the sugestions coming anything that is cheap and you can do at home is cool.

Thank you for sharing.

__________________
Sarah Joy

You can also use witch hazel as an astringent/toner. I've used it for years and works great.

I use also cut a tomato in half and rub the inner part all over my face then rinse. Your skin comes out soft.

my mom and i used to have our own "craft makeup natural beauty line" we would take mint leaves and place them in a jar (like a mason jar) with witch hazel and let them steep for like a month in a dark place- like a cupboard... after that strain the mint leaves out- use a cotton ball and you have a cooling mint astringent- very cheap and nice! people bought this like crazy in the summer!

also you can buy suave (we bought plain castile shampoo - but sauve would work just as well)- shampoo - and after a few uses when there is more room in the bottle, boil rosemary for dark hair in water or chamomile in water for light hair... until the water has infused a good bit of the herb- then use a funnel to replace the used shampoo in the sauve bottle


it was a while ago - but these ones i remember clearly! i will try to remember more