Clear the Clutter: The Pile of Clothes in Your Bedroom

If you want to make some real changes in your home, every Monday we’re going to take action on a trouble spot. It won’t be hard, but it will make a big impact. Are you with us?

Are you ready to make some changes? I sure am. The place we’re going to start is the pile of clothes in the bedroom, the one that’s beside your bed or on your chair.

Why start there? Because I know you usually clean your bedroom last.

We’re going to put away the clothes you took off before you collapsed into bed.

You probably wore them once and thought you might wear them again. They weren’t dirty enough to throw in the laundry, but since they’ve been sitting in a pile, you don’t know if they’re dirty or clean.

How to decide if clothes are dirty or clean:

1. Do a visual check for any dirt or stains.

2. Sniff your clothes to see if they smell clean. (Don’t check socks and underclothes! Always assume those are dirty.)

If your clothes look and smell clean, then they ARE clean, even if you’ve worn them. Hang them back up in your closet or stack them in your drawer with the rest of your clean clothes.

If you have lots of clothes in your pile, you can put them all in the laundry and give yourself a fresh start.

Inside My Makeup Bag

This week I shared styling tips for wavy hair, how I simplified my skin care, and today I want to wrap up Beauty Week with makeup. I thought we could look inside my makeup bag.

It’s a small collection because I do makeup the same way I do clothes: I have a few things that I love to use.

In my makeup bag:

1. Creamy Concealer by Bobbi Brown

2. Skin Foundation SPF 15 by Bobbi Brown

3. Old mascara wand for an eyebrow brush

4. Voluminous Mascara by Loreal – this is really great

5. Burt’s Bees lip gloss

6. Eye shadow by Urban Decay (color “Sin”) – it lasts all day. Urban Decay is known for eye shadow. (I avoid the glittery ones though.)

7. Cheek stain by Tarte – this is like a gel stick not a powder.

8. Lipstick by Bobbi Brown (Treatment Lip Shine SPF 15 in “Raspberry Pink”)

9. Tweezerman tweezers

Simplified Skin Care

I change my hair products regularly, but I am devoted to my skin care products, forever and ever, amen.

My favorite cleanser is Kiss My Face Pure Olive Oil soap. This is the best store-bought soap you can buy for the best price, hands down. I use it to wash my face, I use it in the shower, I use it on the kids, and I wash my hands with it at least a dozen times a day. This unattractive green bar has simplified my beauty routine completely.

I love having one single bar of soap in the bathtub instead of a bunch of little plastic bottles. It travels well for flights because it’s not a liquid. It has minimal packaging, and it lasts a long time. It’s an amazing value for a couple of bucks.

I used to make my own soap because I wanted it to be good quality, but then life got busy, I had to delegate, and it was time for someone else to make the soap. The Kiss My Face soap has a perfect score on the Skin Deep Cosmetics Database since it is made from saponified olive oil. I order it from Vitacost which is where I get most of my skin and hair products.

If you grew up thinking that soap was bad, as I did, it’s because of the commercials you hear about cleansers and shower gels that “won’t dry your face like soap.” The usual soap that comes in an 8-pack for a few dollars at the drug store is not good, truthfully, but good soap–well-made, high quality, and with all the moisturizing ingredients still in tact–that kind of soap is good and gentle for your skin.

I don’t dry out my skin with shower gels, so I don’t use body lotion very often, but sometimes I use these ingredients if my skin feels like it needs something extra:

• Baking soda makes a highly-effective exfoliating powder on damp skin.

• Coconut oil moisturizes and soothes itchy skin.

• Lanolin heals chapped lips. (I learned this from Simple Mom.) If you aren’t familiar with lanolin, you can find it in the baby and nursing mothers aisle at Target under the brand name Lansinoh. It works better than Aquaphor or other products.

• Apricot kernel oil is a soothing, light (non-greasy) oil to use as a face serum or for dry hands and legs. You can even layer it over a lotion for more moisture care.

One time I was sitting at the Bobbi Brown makeup counter in a store, and the makeup artist suggested that I try the new Face Oil. “It’s got a blend of sesame, sweet almond, olive, and jojoba oils in it!” she exclaimed. I like having that healthy, dewy glow, but at $60 an ounce I knew I could run over to the health food store and make my own blend for a few bucks. I already had most of the ingredients at home.

My favorite face moisturizing cream is Jason Vitamin E Age Renewal Moisturizing Crème. It’s quite the beauty bargain.

I experienced the closest thing to a skin-care epiphany, if there is such a thing, one day while sitting in a makeup artist’s chair at the department store. I wanted to buy some new makeup; she asked me what skin type I had.

“Oily,” I said, thinking about my breakouts and what my skin was like as a teenager.

She tried some makeup on me, looked at me, and wrinkled her forehead. “I don’t think you have oily skin,” she replied.

Suddenly I knew it, too. I didn’t have oily skin, I had dry skin, and all the products I was using to dry out my so-called problem were only making it worse. My skin was overcompensating because what it needed most was more moisture.

I went home and ditched the cleansers and creams my dermatologist had recommended for oily skin that always made my skin red and irritated. My skin never gets oily now because I use a lot of moisturizer and gentle soap.

In all the search for beauty products and solutions, there is no substitute for water. All of the other products will help, but water is the most important. We know it already, but we don’t do what we know, and we look for a substitute instead.

I can always tell when I’m not drinking enough water because my skin is the first to show it. I get chapped lips and breakouts. When I get a pimple I reach for Neutrogena On-the-Spot Treatment, but drinking water is the true solution.

How to Care for Wavy Hair

Do you have wavy hair too? Wavy hair’s versatility gives us the best of both worlds, curly and straight.

What we give up in predictability (wavy hair might look great one minute and crazy the next), we gain in adaptability (hair can go curly or straight, and it can really hold a style.) Wavy hair looks friendly, approachable, and natural. While sometimes I find it easier to just blow out my hair straight, I really do prefer the way it looks when I wear my hair wavy.

I loved when Lorraine Massey’s book Curly Girl changed the way that women looked at and took care of their curls. Finally people took notice that you can’t treat all hair types as straight.

Wavy hair, too, needs special care to coax the curls instead of controlling them, add moisture without weighing hair down, and protect hair from rough treatment. Let me show you how I style my natural wavy hair.

Styling Products

It takes a lot of styling product to achieve a natural look. I use mousse and pile it on. You want to try to boost and enhance the curl.

While I like Aveda’s Be Curly enhancing cream, I actually prefer using a less-expensive product such as Herbal Essences’ mousse.  It doesn’t make much difference, and if the product is expensive then I tend to skimp and use less, and my hair doesn’t look as good. Use a lot and scrunch it in while your hair is wet. You have to use a lot of product if you want your hair to look as good after lunch as it does in the morning.

(For smoothing my hair, Frédéric Fekkai’s glossing cream is nice for the rare times when I blow dry it straight.)

Cleansers & Conditioners

When it comes to shampoos and conditioners, I think I’ve tried everything. While the Curly Girl book advises to only use conditioner and never shampoo, that’s a bit extreme for wavy hair. I use the gentlest cleanser possible based on what my hair needs that day.

• Sometimes it just needs a little conditioner on the ends and also rubbing it on your scalp like you would do with shampoo.
• I mostly use sulfate-free gentle shampoos such as Jason Biotin Shampoo. I also like Kiss My Face Whenever Shampoo which is even more gentle and made mostly from aloe vera (that’s what I use on my kids.)
• Once in a while I use a regular shampoo such as Dove Volume Boost Shampoo if my hair is looking limp and it seems to have a lot of build up.

I even tried the “no poo” method for almost a year which involves using baking soda instead of shampoo and diluted apple cider vinegar for a clarifying rinse. That seemed to be better suited for shorter or straight hair, not long, wavy hair. It made my hair heavy, and I had to brush it often to keep it looking clean. I switched back to a regular shampoo method when I grew tired of keeping my hair straight all the time.

For conditioners, look for moisturizing formulas such as Jason Biotin Conditioner. Avoid conditioners and products with silicones which coat your hair to give it that slick feeling in the shower, but don’t give moisture to your hair at all, so your hair ends up dry and brittle. (Look at the ingredients to avoid words that end in -cone.)

Hard Water

I was amazed at the difference water can make when I moved to a city with extrememly high mineral content in the water (also known as hard water) from the mountains. It felt impossible to get my hair clean, there was a lot of calcium buildup and residue, and my hair felt both oily and frizzy. Shampoo made my hair worse and even more frizzy.

To counteract the hard water, I only used conditioner on my scalp instead of shampoo (even though it seems counter-intuitive) to add as much moisture to my hair as possible. I had the best results when I did a final rinse with a liter of filtered water. The filtered water made my hair lighter, cleaner, softer, and curlier. If you have hard water, try rinsing with filtered water to see if it makes a difference to help your hair feel cleaner. It might not be your hair’s fault after all.

Techniques

When you use enough styling product, you can avoid the damaging heat from styling tools such as curling irons and hair dryers. I can tell a huge difference in my hair’s health (less frizz) since I stopped using a hair dryer so regularly. I usually let my hair air dry, but if I’m in a hurry then I might blow dry my hair with a diffuser, always on low heat and aiming at the roots for fullness.

Brushes are for straight hair. I might use a wide-tooth comb in the shower, but I only use my hair brush when I dry my hair straight.

Wavy hair starts in the shower. When I’m almost finished, I do the final rinse on my hair while looking down so that the top section of my hair goes in front of my face instead of behind me. I comb through my hair with my fingers or a wide-tooth comb while the water rinses out the last of the conditioner. This helps to separate and form the curls and gives extra lift at the roots.

After the shower, my hair is still kind of hanging in front of my face, so I wrap up my hair in a towel. You don’t want to towel-dry your hair, you just want to soak up the excess water. If you have curly hair you might want to use a t-shirt or something more gentle than a terry towel.

Then I apply a ton of product while my hair is wet and scrunch it in, and let it air dry.

Time-Saving Tip for Mornings!

I like taking a shower in the morning, but with two little kids, I don’t have time to do the whole shower routine and let my hair air dry. It’s much better for me to take a shower at night when the kids are asleep and I’m winding down from the day. I wash my hair and go to bed. In the morning I lean over the bathtub and rinse my hair under the faucet to get it wet again, then I apply product and let it dry as I get ready for the day.