DIY–Making Your Own Eye Make-Up Remover

Charm is deceptive and beauty is fleeting, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised. Proverbs 31:30

My friend/cousin-in-law, Jess got me some of the fabulous Mary Kay Eye Make-Up remover and a long sleeve of cotton rounds a couple of years ago for my birthday. I used up that one, and I think I bought one more bottle and I really liked it. The next time I ran out, I didn’t have the extra $15 (when you include shipping) in my budget that week to replace it. Most days, I use water-proof mascara and eyeliner and I was used to the good stuff, so whatever I came up with had big shoes to fill.

To the internet!

I googled “make your own eye make-up remover” and one of the first recipes I found sounded really simple. It was, in fact, so simple that from Google search to clean eyes took me about 10 minutes (and that’s just because it took me about 5 minutes to find the baby oil). I was lucky in that I had all of the ingredients in my home that night. Chances are if you have a child under 5 in your house, you do, too.

The first thing you’ll need is a good container. The smart thing to do would be to save an old eye make-up remover container and use that. I wasn’t that smart. This bottle was a discounted bottle of face wash I got at CVS. I’d saved it because it was simple and looked like it could be useful someday. I now save all bottles I come across that look like this for my DIY projects.

The next thing you’ll need are the 3 ingredients: baby oil (I had an unopened bottle I got as a shower gift), tear-free baby shampoo (I used Aveno because it was unscented) and WATER. That’s it, folks–and they charge upwards of $10 for this stuff. Unbelievable.

Depending on the size of your container/your own preferences, you’ll want to adjust the recipe. I’ve changed the recipe a bit to suit my own liking. Here it is:

1 teaspoon tear-free baby shampoo

10 drops (think drops here people, small drops) baby oil

Fill up the rest of the container with water.

Shake.

You’re done. Seriously. How easy was that?? I figure I have enough baby oil in that bottle to be able to make my own eye make-up remover for the rest of my life. I do shake it up each time I use it. Just squirt a small amount onto your cotton round of choice (more on that later), rub on your eyes and be eye make-up free.

DIY–Making Your Own Soap

She looks well to the ways of her household and does not eat the bread of idleness. Proverbs 31:27

My mother thinks I’m weird.  I do odd things like make my own soap.  Well, I repurpose bar soap that we’ll never use into liquid soap that we need.  Now, pennies are not so tight around here that we can’t afford to buy hand soap, but saving a few on liquid soap allows us to put those pennies towards things we really want, like Nutella and Smartphones.  Now, for the record, I didn’t come up with this method.  I googled it last summer and combined several “recipes” to come up with this method.

Anyway, making your own liquid soap out of bar soap isn’t as hard or as fun as you think it will be. Ha.  You need four things:  bar soap, cheese grater, large pot, and water.  Apparently you can add some glycerin or something, but I’ve never done this and my stuff’s turned out fine.

Here’s what you do:

Grate the soap over the large pot with the cheese grater.  This will take a long time.  Your arm will get tired.  Remind yourself that the Proverbs 31 woman has strong arms.  Continue grating.

Don’t breathe in the little soap sprinkly things.  Apparently those can hurt you.  So don’t do that, m’kay?

Keep turning the soap bar over and over again so that it gets used on all sides.  Again, this is going to take a while.  Maybe 20 minutes of just constant grating.  You will survive.  As long as you don’t breathe it in.  Then you’re on your own.

Whew.  You did it.  You turned the bar of soap into little soap sprinkly things.  Excellent work.  Take the pot over to the sink and fill it up with water.  I used the water to wash the soap off the cheese grater because, hey, more free soap, right?

Okay, so now you just boil it for a little while and stir it.  The little soap sprinkly things will sort of melt into the water.  Now the easy part: you wait.  Stir the soap and let it sit for a few days.  Yeah, I said a few days.  Stir it when you walk through kitchen every once in a while.  It will thicken up over a day or so.  Then you’re on your own.  Sometimes I use a funnel to pour it in and sometimes I just dip the bottles into the soap.  Generally it makes a giant mess, but hey, it’s soap, so it’s a clean mess :).

See, what’d I tell you, making your own soap is not so bad.  Oh, by the way, this makes A TON of soap.  Save your containers because you’re going to need them.