Beauty tips? You? I imagine my friends read this and roll on the floor laughing, with tears streaming down their cheeks. You? The person who confuses a lip liner with an eye liner, the person who has never deviated from asking for a wash and go hair style? The person who pretty much wears two pairs of shoes – one pair for the summer and other for the cooler weather?
Okay, I get it, even my five year old told me the other day that my top did not exactly match my pants.
But even I can discover a beauty secrete once in a blue moon – loofah, aka loofa or luffa.
Apparently in Asia and Africa, loofah is popularly grown to be harvested before maturity and eaten as a vegetable. Post maturity, it can be used as a sponge after being processed to remove everything but the network of xylem.
I have very dry skin, especially in the winter time. Never was a problem in Texas back in the college days. Since I moved to California in the 90’s, the dry skin problem gets a little worse every year. Who am I kidding? perhaps it’s just a part of getting older. Anyhow I have used all sorts of lotions - intensive care this and skin therapy that. Sadly nothing worked and now I am left with a collection of ineffective bottles of goo that are eye sores to my husband.
Then I bought a loofah bath scrubber from my local drug store to replace my nylon one, in the spirit of reducing plastic consumption. I had my doubts: it felt pretty rough and I was supposed to scrub my bare skin with that? After some hesitation, I tossed the soft but disintegrating nylon scrubber and picked up the loofah.
Let me just say that it is so worth my $2.15!! It took a bit to get used to the rough texture. But a month later, I no longer have dry skin – not much at least. It’s sort of like a natural and reusable exfoliate – taking off a layer of dead skin. I know it sounds oh-so-gross. Undoubtedly expensive exfoliates with 57 ingredients will never advertise “we polish off dead skin”. But hey, regardless how gorgeous the model is next to a $95 exfoliate bottle, removing a layer of dead skin is what an exfoliate does.
Amazingly, loofah can also be used to scrub kitchen counter or floor. Now this probably gives away any beauty cred I have earned from the previous paragraphs, if any.
(image courtesy of Rachel Ray, seriously)
How about “loofah can also be used to polish your luxurious kitchen counter – smooth as new skin.” Okay, I will shut up now. No advertisement career in my future.
The other nice quality about loofah is that it is compostable. Recycle This provides more ideas for reuse loofah - make glycerin soap or use as a planter. Brilliant.
Objects you may not want to use loofah on: babies, children, cars – all have much more delicate skin than us adults.
CindyW
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Comments
So Green!