Shiny hair can be yours with a few drops of oil (Shutterstock*)
1. Sour Grapes, Sweet Skin: Slice a few grapes in half and rub the cut sides over clean skin. Apparently, the fruit acids are natural exfoliators, and act to help break up and remove dead cells.
2. Wake up! It’s well known that tired, puffy eyes get revived with cucumber slices, which are mildly diuretic and drain fluid built up overnight, but tea bags, stored in the fridge for a few minutes, will do just as well. Neither on hand? Place chilled spoons over your eyelids.
3. Kill Spots Dead by dabbing tea tree oil over them. Not available? Cut open a chamomile tea bag and make a paste with some warm water. Put on the spot for 30 mins. It should reduce its size.
4. Steam it! Facial masks and treatments are more effective in the bath or shower–your pores will more open to receiving the benefits of the mask’s ingredients. Use a natural clay mask for normal to oily skin, or mush up an avocado or papaya for dry skin. Alternatively, honey, plain yogurt alone or mixed with oatmeal for oily skin, mushed bananas or whipped egg whites can all be used by themselves or in combination for a great toning facial mask. Apply whatever you find mentioned above in your kitchen to your visage, then soak in a tub before rinsing off.
Get your skin glowing with natural exfoliators (Shutterstock*)
5. Get glowing! No need to sunbathe: you can get a nice, bronzed look by blending 1 tsp. cocoa powder with a dollop of sunblock or skin cream until you’ve obtained the shade of glow that’s right for your skin. (This tip comes not from gran, but from Zero Waste Home’s Bea Johnson). Bonus: it smells great!
6. Firm up skin with facial exercises. Every morning, my grandma would ‘kiss the heavens’–she’d tilt her head back, pucker up and try hard to kiss the sky a few dozen times. It looks a bit mad, but I swear, my gran had a pretty firm jawline into her 70s.
7. Shine up your hair with a few drops of Argan Oil on the ends. Gran used to use olive oil–this also works, but may smell a bit strange.
8. Scrub up well with a natural facial and body exfoliator: take equal parts brown sugar and olive oil and mix coarsely. Rub into face, elbows, knees or any other area you'd like to exfoliate. Rinse off with warm water. Alternatively, coffee grounds work instead of sugar.
9. Whiten up your teeth by rubbing the inside of a banana peel over your teeth for two minutes a night for 2-3 weeks. I have no idea why, but this does work! I’ve also heard that strawberries and baking soda are highly effective and natural teeth whiteners, and oil pulling (swishing oil in the mouth and then spitting) is also apparently an effective way to remove stains from teeth. Personally, I'd go for the oil: fruit has sugar, which doesn’t seem to me to be a great idea to rub onto your teeth, but it did seem to work for gran.
