Budget Stretching Ideas - Personal Care Products

While you can find inexpensive commercial products to shave money off your grocery bill, most of these personal care items contain toxic ingredients that may cost you in the long run by negatively affecting your health. If you choose to shave money off your grocery bill by buying the cheapest products, great. That is definitely an option. We have done this in the past as well.

Our family's health issues have steered us toward cleaner products, however, and since Prepped Living aims for a healthier lifestyle, we will be focusing on budget stretching for healthy options. In our experience, personal care products that are not laden with toxic ingredients tend to cost more. Thus, the best way to stretch your budget for healthy personal care products is to make your own. Not only will you be saving yourself money, but you can make cleaner, toxin-free products that won't damage your health.

Here are some ideas for making your own beauty and personal products:

Mouthwash

We make our own mouthwash using essential oils, sea salt, and filtered water. Be sure to use quality essential oils that have undergone testing and are safe for human use (some essential oils are made for diffusing purposes only and are not safe for internal or external use).  

Homemade Mouthwash - Our Prepped Living website has the recipe we currently use as well as some alternative recipes.

Homemade Mouthwash Ingredients

Toothpaste

The most simple toothpaste substitute is baking soda. It is a mild abrasive and can help remove stains and whiten teeth. It also has a high PH which helps to neutralize oral acidity, thereby creating a less favorable environment for bacteria. If you find that you cannot handle the somewhat bitter taste of straight baking soda, you can make your own toothpaste. There are many recipes on the internet. Here are a couple that I found:

Mountain Rose Herbs Toothpaste

You Make It Simple Toothpaste

Lotion

Instead of lotion, we use infused oils or homemade salves. You can make any of these yourself. Here are some links for making infused oils, salve, and lotions.

DIY Infused Oils

Rose infused oil and calendula infused oil are some of my favorite oils to use to hydrate and soften skin. 

Making Infused Rose Oil

DIY Healing Salve

We make a healing salve that not only helps heals cuts and abrasions, but serves as an all-purpose salve for hydrating dry skin. It also works as a nail and cuticle conditioner and an antiseptic ointment. 


DIY Healing Salve

DIY Lotion or Body Butter

If you just love the feel of lotion over oils or salves, you can find numerous recipes for making your own at home. Here is a simple recipe for homemade whipped body butter that sounds lovely:

The House & Homestead Body Butter

Lip Balm

We don't often use lip balm, but when we need extra hydration, we usually use the healing salve mentioned in the section above. You can make your own as well. Here is one recipe from a site known for selling quality herbs.

Mountain Rose Herbs Lip Balm

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