Where did Monday go? And more on Honey.

Over the weekend, we house-sat for my dad and step mom. A great way to have an inexpensive mini-weekend away. We did spend for gas to and from their house, and ate out a bit more than normal, but, all in all, a lot cheaper than a hotel! Plus, seeing as it was a family home, that we have previously visited, we were comfortable there.

That's really an aside though, and the reason for no Monday post. I was in transit.

Between my recent business trip and this weekend away, I was confronted with the question of how do I transport my attempt at sustainable and earth-friendly personal hygiene.

The honey that I've been using to wash my face comes in a large jar. It is pretty tasty, too. I had two reasons for not just packing up the entire jar. One: it is big. I didn't want to be carrying that all around, and in and out of people's homes and hotels. As it is, at home, I take out of the jar roughly what I need. The jar stays in the kitchen. Two: I figured that my husband would not appreciate being deprived of honey while I was gone.

I was also completely out of commercial face wash, so just taking an old bottle or bar of that was not possible.

Off to the store with a Christmas gift card I went. I bought a squeezable honey-bear of honey, and put it in my toiletry bag, slightly amused.

Using the plastic squeeze bottle of honey was a bit easier for application than what I had been doing at home (spooning out sugared honey into a small bowl, and scoping some up, as needed with my finger). I could just squeeze what I needed onto my finger, instead of guess-timating.

What I noticed, though, is that my skin was happier at home than when traveling. Could be a number of things, like the constant change in temperature, humidity and the general stress of traveling. What I suspect, though, is that it has to do with the fact that the honey at home was sugared, and therefore was exfoliating and cleansing; and the fact that for my business trip, I had left the tea tree oil at home.

So, I've deduced that my skin like regular exfoliation, and regular application of tea tree oil. I don't use the tea tree oil every time I was my face, but have been aiming for at least once a day.

As far as my jojoba and vitamin E moisturizers - the jojoba oil I have is in a small bottle, so that is transportable enough, and I just threw a few vitamin E capsules into a bag (one pre-stuck with a pin) and was on my way.

Recap:
1) Honey is still working out well on my face, and I'm happy with it.
2) Learned that my skin likes regular exfoliation, and tea tree oil as an acne treatment.
3) For all my fretting, traveling with this regime is surprisingly easy (I almost always forget something!). And, if I want to exfoliate on the road, I'm sure that I can always just mix some sugar and honey together in my hand.

Et voila!

How do your toiletries usually travel?

Iron: 1 Emily: 0.5 A Minor Medical Follow Up

You may remember that I burned my hand on my iron recently. After a day or two of not paying the attention to it that I should I have, I finally realized my... stupidity, slathered it in vitamin E oil, and covered the cleaned and treated wound with a bandaid.

I've kept up the routine of thoroughly washing my hands and the wound every morning, and night, then applying the vitamin E oil, and covering with a bandaid. Of course, I wash my hands as needed throughout the day, but I don't replace the oil and bandaid every time.

Now, the burn looks like this. You can see that a blister had formed. Since I see it every day, I can tell that the redness has subsided, and that the visibly affected area has reduced. Really, it used to look angry, like, "Why didn't you treat me right away?!"

Again, I stress the importance of seeking professional medical care for serious injuries. Also, one should always take a burn seriously, and not essentially ignore it as I did initially.

Honey do Two: The Results

Last Thursday, I started using honey to wash my face. This grand experiment was born out of a rapidly diminishing Neutrogena bar, research about using honey this way (see previously linked post), and well, reluctance to spend more money on beauty products. Plus, I am trying to replace bad-for-me and bad-for-the-earth products with good-for-me-and-the-earth ones as I can. (To see how the products you use rate on a good-for-you/earth scale, check out the Skin Deep Cosmetic Safety Database. The face wash I was using is here. Here's honey.)

If this honey thing worked out, it seemed like a good way to reduce my beauty product purchasing (and the plastic that they come in), and help steer my usage towards the good-for-earth.

Since then, I've only used honey to wash my face, following it up with tea tree oil once a day, and using jojoba oil or vitamin E oil as a moisturizer. (I'll talk about those oils as moisturizers later.) I am pleased to report that my skin feels better, and not dried out after washing, and that the acne I had appears to be clearing up.

I cannot be 100% certain that this improvement in texture and acne is due to the honey or the moisturizers, since I switched both at the same time. I do know, however, that it was not the tea tree oil that single handedly defended my face from encroaching pimples, as I had been using that for a few weeks. It was helping when I was using it in conjunction with more conventional products.

So, I am quite happy with the results so far. My husband thinks it is a little odd, and only protested because of how tasty the honey is. I plan on continuing to use honey as a face-wash, and look forward to seeing how it works long-term.

Did my experience convince you to try honey to wash your face? If so, tell me about it. Or does it just prove to you that I'm touched in the head? Feel free to tell me that, too. Do the reports of bee and honey shortages impact your opinion on this at all?

A Game of Grocery Store Pick-Up

Recently, I had to make a quick run to the grocery store on my way home from work. I wanted to try a soup recipe for dinner that night (more on that later), and needed an onion. The recipe also called for smoked ham and a ham hock, which I didn’t have and didn’t want because neither of us are big fans, so… I ixnayed the ham and the hock.

Pondering the recipe further, because this is how I spend my down time, I considered replacing the flavor and fat the ixnayed ingredients would have lend the soup with bacon.

I also needed to get some vitamin E oil, to treat my poor, burned hand.

And, then, I also figured I would need to pick up some drinks for my husband. That is simply a part of most grocery runs for our little family. (Yes, I know that these are not the most economical or ecological choice, but we buy what he will drink.)

So, my list was, roughly in order of priority: onion, vitamin E oil, drinks, and bacon. I also knew that I had to keep the cost under ten dollars. This is not an impossible task, and if not for the vitamin E oil, probably could have been done for closer to five dollars. But, alas, I put the health of our skin high on the list of things that are important.

Into the Marsh I went. Why Marsh, because it is literally on the way home. No turning onto a side street, no minor detour, nothing. It is on Third Street, as I drive home. In general, I’ve noticed that Marsh and Kroger tend to have similar sale prices. The advantages Kroger has over Marsh are: larger store (by me), more store- brand items (more items at lower cost), a bulk section, and a massive wine/liquor section (gotta love Indiana). Advantages of Marsh over Kroger: literally on the way home, $20 meat variety packs, and occasionally, they have better sale prices.

I made a bee-line for the pharmacy section, to case the joint for vitamin E oil. I saw two brands of capsules and one bottle of straight oil. All of the choices, no matter the quantity, were pretty much going to blow my chances of buying the vitamin E and onion. I was crushed.

Deciding that the onion was more important this trip, I left the pharmacy section, questioning my choice of store. I made my way to the produce section, by way of the breakfast meats. A quick survey of the bacons told me that if I wanted something that wasn’t completely chemical-laden, I was going to be paying at least $2.50 for a package. Not a bad price over all, but bacon was last on my list, so the first thing to get cut. I made a mental note, and went on to the onions.

It was about $1.30 per pound for loose onions (I know!), while the three pound bags were about $2.50. The loose onions were larger than the bagged onions, but at $1.30 per pound, they were more expensive per unit than the bagged onions. Also, larger wasn’t necessarily better for me. I can always cut up two onions instead of one. Leftover onion, unfortunately, tends to go bad before it is used or frozen. (This is something that I am working to remedy.)

Bagged onions it was. Now, I had about $7 to spend on the rest of my list. I went back to the pharmacy section, to peruse my choices once more. (All of this back and forth/shopping the store is why I don’t like shopping with my husband, and why he is exasperated by shopping with me.) 

And that’s when I saw it. A display of a supplement brand that had not been on the shelves where I was looking before. They were on sale. I got a bottle of capsules (40, I believe) for about $3.50. Score!

At this point, I rethought the bacon entirely. The previous night, I did have the foresight to pull some ground beef down from the freezer, so I knew that I did have some meat to add to the soup, and that I could count on some fat from there for flavor. Considering my list and my budget, I decided that bacon was not necessary.

Resolved to my choices, I had about $3.50 to spend on drinks. Well, less than that, considering taxes. And ever since I left Kentucky, I’ve never been sure of the food tax rate. I think North Carolina had a weird, graduated system that depended on the type of food, and level of preparedness. As a result, I try to leave a substantial cushion for “The Attack of the Tax!”

The next item, drinks, is where I regret my choice of Marsh over Kroger. My location doesn’t have store brand soda. Unless Faygo is store brand. I just can’t stand spending $1.25 on a 2-liter of soda. Especially when that is the sale price. Curses.

I sped-walked past the sodas, and headed towards the bottles of Lipton Green Tea (Yes, I know that there are tons of additives and such in these, but this is for my husband, not me. He likes it. And, well, it is preferable to tons of soda.) In my speediness, though, I almost sped right past an actual sale on the 2-liters. 68 cents for a 2-liter of Faygo. I almost did a happy dance in the middle of the aisle. I got the lemon-lime. No caffeine.

All in all, I ended up spending about eight and a half dollars. Not my best shopping trip, but not my worst, either. The soup may have been tastier with bacon, but it was still yummy. The Faygo was happily drunk. And I’ve been able to use one capsule of vitamin E oil multiple times.  Plus, I have onions ready for when I need them.

How do you think I did? Would you have made different choices? Do you have any particularly gratifying grocery store stories?

Iron: 1 Emily: 0 A Minor Medical Post

**I am not a doctor, nor do I have any medical training at all. Please use common sense, and do not hesitate to seek medical treatment.**

I have long hated ironing. It always felt like...well, such a chore. My solution? Quite simple: avoid. I don't iron.

Never took an iron to college. Didn't register for one for my wedding. May have inherited an abandoned one from a roommate, but that quickly got shoved to the back of a closet, and eventually made it either to the dumpster (for shame, Emily!) or Goodwill (that's more like it).

To keep from sending either myself or my husband out of the house looking like a wrinkled mess, I was simply vigilant about removing clothes from the dryer promptly (a good thing to do when working with laundromats), and carefully shaking out/folding any should-be-ironed clothes. The seams of pant legs got quickly matched up, and smoothly folded, while button-down shirts were pulled from the pile before the crush of t-shirts and jeans could cause permanent wrinkles. After carefully hanging these clothes, I simply let gravity, and the weight of the rest of the closet take care of the rest.

For our clothes, this has been working well enough. But, it won't do for quilting.

As you may know, I've recently started my first full quilt. This requires a lot of measuring, cutting and piecing together of fabric, and in order to do this correctly, so that everything will match up in the end, the cloth needs to be washed, dried, and ironed before a single measure is taken or line drawn.

I needed an iron. *sigh... I tried to avoid this, but broke down, and got one. Also got a small, table-top ironing board, that is perfect for craft-ironing, but not for "real" ironing. I found this out the hard way.

In an attempt to iron my first shirt in years (promise that I know how to do it), I managed to maneuver the iron and myself so that I grazed the iron with my hand. There was a small flash of pain, just enough for me to realize what was happening, but not much. So, because of the apparent lack of searing, lingering pain or any visible damage, I simply continued on. Probably should not have done that.

I did wash my hands, and try jojoba oil on the burn, followed by my normal oatmeal-lotion. I used jojoba oil because that is what I had, but should have used vitamin E oil. I use an oatmeal-based lotion, like Aveeno, because I inherited dry skin from my mom.

So, here's the burn. According to the Mayo Clinic, it is probably a second degree burn, because of the lone, solitary blister. Also according to them, I should have immediately cooled the burn by running it under or immersing it in cool water, instead of continuing to iron. Next, I should have covered it with a sterile, lint-free bandage, such as gauze, instead of leaving it completely exposed. The Mayo Clinic site also lists some things not to do, like use butter. 

The Mayo Clinic did not specifically say to put on any creams or antibiotic ointments, but they do make burn ointment for a reason. A previously listed link includes vitamin E oil as an option for soothing minor burns and helping skin heal.

So, why vitamin E oil over a burn ointment? Well, because vitamin E oil is multi-purpose. It can be used as a body and face moisturizer alone, or even in conjunction with other lotions. It can be used to help reduce the appearance of scars and wrinkles. It can even be used in hair-care products. Since vitamin E oil has many purposes, using it means that you can reduce the number of other products you buy. 

It should be noted that the burn I sustained was minor. It was no more than an inch long, and scarcely a quarter of an inch wide. Regardless of the severity, my attitude toward the burn was really quite negligent, and I do stress that if you burn yourself, you should take it seriously, and determine that it is indeed a minor burn before you attempt to care for it yourself. It may be less expensive to slather on vitamin E oil or burn ointment, but in the long run, if the burn is serious, you will save yourself money, pain, and possibly more if you seek immediate medical attention.