| Look and Feel Your Best! |
| An Oatmeal Bath for Sensitive Skin If you love the way baths relax you, but your sensitive skin finds them irritating, try oatmeal in your bathwater. Pour some into a square of cheesecloth, close it with a rubber band or plastic twist, and hang it under the the faucet as your bathwater is running. Once in the tub, use the cheesecloth bag of oatmeal as your sponge. The oatmeal softens and moisturizes your skin. Softening Hard Water Hard water baths can be made softer by adding 1/2 cup of either ordinary table salt or baking soda to the bathtub. Hard water has an overabundance of certain minerals--chiefly calcium and magnesium. The sodium in salt and baking soda helps to offset the minerals. Soaps for Hard Water Synthetic soaps are also called detergent soaps. Don't confuse them with laundry and dishwasher detergents; they don't have the harshness. Synthetics are made from fatty acids derived from petrochemicals instead of the fatty acids found most often in tallow and coconut oil. They clean just like true soaps but they don't deposit a film when used in hard water. They also tend to be less alkaline than soaps. Good Uses for Soap Ends Save the last bits of your bars of soap and stuff them into the pockets in your loofah for an instant sudsy natural sponge. |
| # Bathing # |
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| # Feet # |
| Hangnails Before you go to bed rub petroleum jelly all around it. Hangnails are painful because they're all dried out, and they split dry skin. The jelly forms a seal around the dead skin so that your body fluids can moisten and soften it, and when it's softer, it's less painfull. Rubbing Off Dry Skin You'll always have some rough, dry skin on your heels, regardless of how much cream you rub into them. Though cream won't remove it, a pumice stone or pumice brush, wetted and lightly soaped, will do the trick. Use it to scrub off dead skin. A half minute of this after every bath or shower will keep your feet smooth. Particularly bad heels will need some presoaking first. Reducing Foot Odor The key to keeping your feet smelling good is to keep them dry and well ventilated. Go shoeless or wear sandals when you can. Wear leather shoes rather than shoes made from synthetic material because leather "breathes" and the synthetics don't. For the same reason, choose cotton socks over acrylic and nylon ones. After bathing, dust your feet with talcum powder or plain cornstarch. |
| # Hair # |
| Comb, don't Brush! Brittle hair thata breaks easily and has many split ends may be the result of too much brushing. The 100-strokes-a-day-hairbrush rule that we all grew up with actually does more harm than good. Hard brushing strips away your hair's outer cells, exposing the soft inner core of the hair shaft to all kinds of possible damage. It is much better to gently comb your hair. Never brush your hair while it's wet because it stretches more easily then and more readily snaps and breaks, much like a rubber band that gets stretched too far. The Right Kind of Comb and Brush Plastic and metal combs can be harmful to your hair because both have sharp teeth. Plastic combs are often made in molds, and the molds can leave grooves down the center that grab and rip hair shafts. A sawcut comb, in which each tooth is cut into the comb and smoothed, is the best since it has no sharp edges. Never use a brush that has sharp, hard, short bristles or wire bristles. Inexpensive plastic bristle brushes may actually be better for your hair than expensive natural bristle brushes because they are softer and therefore gentler on your hair. Washing Brushes and Combs Wash hairbrushes and combs by soaking them for a few minutes in a sink of water to which has been added a tablespoon of baking soda and a drop or two of household bleach or other antiseptic. Swish a few times, then rinse. |
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| (Source: Rodale's Book of Hints, Tips & Everyday Wisdom) |
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