A lot of skin care products contain scary ingredients and are pretty expensive.  Totally organic facial cleansers are really expensive and sometimes go bad before you can use the whole package–and a surprising number of them ignore organic-ness in packaging and put the stuff in a vinyl tube that slowly saturates it with carcinogens and endocrine disruptors.  There are some great natural soaps available at reasonable prices (Dr. Bronner’s soap looks expensive, but a few drops go a long way!) for washing the rest of your body, but some people’s faces don’t respond well to ordinary soap and get dry or dull-looking.

Luckily, there’s an all-natural, anti-bacterial, moisturizing, low-priced, minimally-packaged, easy-to-use alternative that’s sold in every grocery store, is often available from local sources, is so safe you can eat it, and even tastes delicious!

Honey.

Simply rub honey on your face, wait a few minutes, and then rinse it off with warm water.  Honey kills germs, so it helps to prevent pimples and blackheads.  The stickiness followed by thorough rinsing gets all the dirt and oil off your face, without drying your skin.  In fact, it leaves skin beautifully moist and soft, reducing small wrinkles.  It shrinks pores, reduces redness, and generally gives skin a more even look.

I put on the honey while waiting for the shower to get warm, after taking off my clothes–you don’t want to pull off a shirt over a honey-coated face!  I lick my fingers. 🙂  Then I get into the shower and start washing other body parts.  When the honey begins to melt and drip, I rinse it off.  Convenient!

My face is oily in the summer, especially the nose and forehead, so I do wash with soap at least once a day, but I also use honey every morning.  In the winter, I use honey every morning, and at night I just rinse my face with plain water, which removes a lot of surface dirt.  I no longer have trouble with flaky skin on my cheeks in the winter.

Honey is gentle even on broken skin.  It’s fabulous when you have a cold and the edges of your nose are raw and cracked–just put on some honey and leave it as long as you can, until nose-blowing removes it. (Cloth handkerchiefs instead of tissues help to prevent this nose pain in the first place.)

I’ve read that raw honey is even better for your skin than pasteurized honey.  I haven’t tried it myself.  I have compared local honey vs. supermarket honey, and honey from various types of plants, but it all seems to work equally well.  I buy local honey at the food co-op from bulk containers, reusing glass jars, so there’s no packaging!

What if the honey crystallizes?  Well, now it’s exfoliating, too!  Usually there are little bits that stay liquid at the edges, so I use those on the most delicate skin around my eyes and scrub the rest of my face with the crystals.

I almost never wear make-up.  If you do, check out these instructions for removing make-up with honey.

Washing my face with honey works for me!  (If you were hoping for a back-to-school tip this week, check out our lunchbox recommendation.)  I also use this all-natural facial scrub for occasional exfoliation, and I wash my hair with vinegar.  I buy hardly any beauty products anymore!

UPDATE: I’m going to link this to Healthy 2day Wednesday, too!