Miracle Oil

I’m not terribly crunchy, by nature. I mean, sure I recycle and try to conserve as much paper/water/whatever as the next person, but I don’t go out of my way to be ‘green.’ My kid wears disposable diapers—both of them did, in fact—and they were both formula fed. (That’s a whole other ball of wax there—time-wise, the breastfeeding thing just didn’t happen before I was set to go back to work and so I figured any food in my babies’ tummies was better than no food. I was not—and am not—going to kick myself over one comparatively insignificant aspect of my parenting. Besides which, my almost exclusively formula fed boy is a phenomenal reader at the age of five and he’s got no health issues. I don’t think that the breast milk would have made him any better than he is right now.)

Anyhoo, the long and short of it is that I went through my ‘let’s recycle all the cans and send the resulting money to Greenpeace’ phase when I was thirteen. Back when I harbored dreams of having a pony and marrying the New Kids on the Block. (Yes, all of them. Shut up.)

The point of this is that I recycle and try to be responsible about what I use, but I don’t go out of my way to do things that are ‘better for me.’ I don’t worry about the chemicals in my shampoo and laundry detergent. I don’t get myself into a huff over using the dryer to dry my clothes. I’m probably just still asleep in the Matrix, but I can live with that.

What I do get excited about, however, is stuff that works and makes me feel good. One of those things is washing my face with oil. It seems crazy and like it shouldn’t work. I’ve only been doing this for a few days, but my skin is soft and seems….I don’t know….better. I don’t have quantitative data on this. I didn’t do extensive scientific research, but it just feels good. For the first time in I don’t know how long, I don’t have to use moisturizer after I’m done washing my face, which is something of a minor miracle, especially if you consider how lazy I am.

I won’t go into a lot of detail at how it works—Simple Mom has done that quite extensively and much more convincingly than I have. I will say that I expected to be pretty greasy when I got done, but by and large, the vast majority of the oil is absorbed by the time my wet rag gets cold and I start to wipe up. I’m using a one to three ratio of castor oil to olive oil, but I suggest playing around and finding your mix. If you’ve been thinking of giving this a try, I totally recommend it. The ingredients are cheap, the mix is easy and if you don’t like it you can always go back to your old chemical ways. I think I’m going to stick with it, myself.