Here’s my theory – if we have to deal with wrinkles, shouldn’t we be done with pimples? I mean really – isn’t one of those enough? Sadly, however, breakouts are a fact of life at ALL ages.  Like it or not. But we don’t have to sit back and take it, right? Here are the Garden Girl natural skin care tips for keeping skin clear – without using harsh chemicals or expensive “seen on TV”, celebrity-endorsed systems.

The best defense is a good offense. Heard that before? Well it actually applies here pretty nicely – a good daily skincare regimen will do wonders for keeping you clear from breakouts.  Our recommended system includes 3 daily steps plus another you do 1x to 3x per week. We recommend washing morning and evening, but if you can only do it once a day, then definitely pick evening. Why? Because you don’t want to go to bed and leave icky junk on your face for those extra hours. In the morning you can just skip straight to the toner step! (And as always – look for natural skin care products that are paraben-free, sulfate-free, petroleum-free and phthalate-free for best results)

1. Wash using a sulfate-free, paraben-free face wash with either Tea Tree Oil or Glycolic Acid.  This will clear out pores and remove irritating oil, grease and other environmental elements your skin is exposed to each day. Garden Girl picks: You’re Fresh with Tea Tree Oil for normal/combination skin and At Long Last with glycolic acid for oily/acne prone skin.
2. Tone with a revitalizing and cleansing toner that will leave your skin fresh and primed for your moisturizer. For oily skin, you’ll want to look for a toner that acts like an astringent as well – such as one with amazing witch hazel. Toner is an often overlooked step that is vital for keeping skin clear. It not only removes the last traces of makeup but it also clears out pores which helps them to close back up and shrink back down. Clear pores obviously means less of a chance for breakouts. And the toner prepares your skin by balancing its pH so that it will maximize the effects of the moisturizer. After you cleanse your skin, the pH naturally gets altered so if you cleanse and then immediately moisturize your skin won’t take that moisture in as effectively.  Garden Girl pick for normal/oily skin: Even Ste(pH)en with witch hazel, skin-clearing herbal extracts, and skin-firming DMAE.
   • As a side note, toner can make a great “pick me up” on hot summer days. A quick spritz can cool off your face without ruining your make-up. As a matter of fact, it even works great to set mineral make-up. For added “ahhhh” store one in the fridge.
3. Moisturize using a face cream that yes, even has some oils in it. I know, if you have oily skin the word “moisturizer” can make you a little, um, anxious. So you tend to avoid it like the plague, right? Well, fear not, because here’s the thing: if you don’t moisturize your skin properly your skin will actually start to think that it isn’t producing enough oil. Uh oh. Because that means that it will start to overproduce oils. And that is where you can get additional breakouts. So yes – embrace your moisturizer – just find one that doesn’t irritate your skin.
   • Look for one with a high concentration of hyaluronic acid which is a humectant which means it draws moisture in and traps it in the skin. It works best in combination with other emolients so provides balanced moisture and hydration. Another great ingredient to look for is Zinc PCA which can naturally help to keep skin clear.
   • Alternatively, a moisturizer with Alpha Hydroxy Acids can help to get rid of dead skin cells which in turn keeps pores unclogged and skin smooth. And I know this may seem obvious, but choose one for faces. Don’t use a body moisturizer on your face, please.
   • Garden Girl face cream picks: No Worries (for sensitive skin, with Zinc PCA) or Nature Nurture (for normal/oily/combination skin, with AHAs).
4. Exfoliate one to three times each week. If you have sensitive skin, stick to once per week, but if it is normal to oily and not sensitive, then you should be able to handle 2-3 times per week. Exfoliating is a very key step. This is where you can really see a difference. Not only will your skin look smoother, with fewer lines and wrinkles, faded/fewer age spots and acne scars (yea!) but it will keep your pores clearer and your skin less hospitable to pimples and breakouts. Nice, huh? It’s really an amazing tool – but it has to be used correctly.
   • First and foremost – exfoliating exposes “newer” skin so your skin is highly susceptible to sun damage after any exfoliation. Be very diligent about using sunscreen that day and the next day (well really, you should be wearing it every day anyway…). The other is that it can irritate skin if it is overdone or done too harshly.There are 2 types of exfoliators – chemical (by that we mean anything from harsh chemicals to natural “chemicals” like fruit acid) and physical (anything with scrubbing pieces in it – microderm crystals, crushed dried fruit pits or beans, plastic beads  etc.). Clearly Garden Girl recommends natural choices. But they should also be safe for your skin. Crushed fruit pits (think apricot scrubs etc) or similar things can be very rough on skin causing micro-tears that can damage skin. And plastic beads? Just plain bad – especially for the environment as those things go right down your drain and into the water system. Blech.
   • Both physical and chemical systems basically do the same thing – they remove the dead skin cells and smooth skin. But a physical exfoliant is something that you scrub on your face (in a gentle, circular motion), while a chemical product is something that you put on your skin and leave on, as it does the work for you. Both are great choices – it’s just up to you how you’d prefer to do it. And if you are really struggling with breakouts, the chemical peels can be a better option as depending on the product, it can be a bit stronger and more effective.
   • For example, Garden Girl’s Break Free gel and G for Men’s smooth, are both 7.5% fruit acid (glycolic, lactic,  and pyruvic acids) and it is “unbuffered” which means it is faster acting and more effective  than most fruit acid peels you will find for home use – yet it is still safe for non-professional use. Typically you will find “buffered” peels which are somewhat less effective.If you’re interested in the physical exfoliator, then opt for Garden Girl’s Starting Over microderm scrub – which has a creamy base and natural micro crystals (the same ones used by dermatologists for their microdermabrasion treatments).
5. Fight a pimple naturally. Sometimes you just can’t avoid it, no matter how well you stick to a good skin care system, once in awhile a little “spot” pops up. Don’t panic! Here’s what we recommend – and it really works! Tea Tree Oil. But be careful when you use it – it shouldn’t be used at full strength on your skin. What we suggest is to dip a Qtip into the bottle of Tea Tree Oil and dampen the tip with the oil. Then run that Qtip under a trickle of water just enough to dilute it a bit. You’ll be amazed at how strong it still is! Then dab the Qtip on your pimple. Do this after you have washed and toned but before the moisturizer. Do it morning and evening. Usually after the first 1 or 2 treatments the pimple will start to disappear. You can find Tea Tree Oil online or at Trader Joe’s (it’s the cheapest there) if you have one near you. Tea Tree Oil is a great thing to have on hand. I have written about it in the past in a post on this blog.

So that’s it. This system will work incredibly well for most people – even those that have done the whole dermatologist thing. Save yourself some trips to the doctor’s office and try this instead. You just might be amazed at the results!

As I posted recently, I have been checking out The Green Book by Elizabeth Rogers and Thomas Kostigen. It’s a very handy paperback book filled with helpful and (most importantly) EASY tips to save energy, reduce waste, and generally act more responsibly.

This week I thought I’d share some of my favorites from their Travel chapter. They have all kinds of suggestions for planning your trip, getting there, staying at a hotel, sightseeing and eating out. There are a bunch of things in there that I hadn’t really thought much about, and some which are just worth repeating. Here are my top 5 from this chapter:

1. Linens. Use the same linens and towels in your hotel room throughout your stay.  The average hotel room consumers more than 200 gallons of water per DAY, or as much as your entire household typically uses in a day. Trimming the amount of water used by washing sheets and towels can save up to 40 percent of a hotel’s water use.
2. Suitcases. Pack lightly – every additional ten pounds per traveler requires and additional 350 million (!!) gallons of jet fuel per year, which is enough to keep a 747 flying continuously for ten years. As a serial over-packer – that one hit home for me!
3. Guidebooks. Research your travel online and print out only the pages you’ll need to reference. You’ll save time, money and paper waste. More than 800,000 travel books go to waste every year!
4. Toiletries. Pack your own shampoo, soap and toothpaste instead of relying on the ones provided by most hotels (and of course then you can pack your favorite Garden Girl products!). You’ll get the product you want and you’ll creaste less plastic waste. A single 300 room hotel in Las Vegas uses more than 150,000 plastic bottles of shampoo per year.
5. Water bottles. Use and refill as single (preferable stainless steel or BPA-free plastic) water bottle when you travel. The average person in the United States drinks 8 oz. of bottled water per day (how did that ever happen??). It takes 1.5 million barrels of oil to annually satisfy America’s demand for bottled water (the bottles for which are derived from petroleum). If that oil were converted to gasoline, the total could fuel 500,000 station wagons to take their families on coast-to-coast road trips. Considering the ongoing and unspeakable tragedy in the Gulf, we need to do whatever we can to reduce this country’s insatiable appetite for petroleum. And drinking from a reusable bottle is an easy way to start.

Let me know if you have any favorite eco-friendly travel tips – I’d love to hear them! Happy trails!

A friend of mine (thanks Mira!) tipped me off the other day to a fun new website – Alice.com. It’s kind of a strange place where you can go to buy basically a bunch of products for the home, apparently at great prices, and with free shipping. They have automatic coupons so you don’t have to waste time searching for coupons or clipping them. And they can help manage a lot of your “staples” shopping.

At first I just checked out the site to see what it was all about – then I noticed that you can filter your product searches by specific things like “premium”, “bargain hunter” and….(my personal favorite, and my reason for making my first purchase on the site)…”green/organic”. So I soon found myself loading up on toilet paper, paper towels, toilet bowl cleaner (still love that GreenWorks one), and a funky thing that I wanted to try – the Earthstone Bathroom Stone (more about that in a future post!). They have all of the Seventh Generation and Green Works products.

If you find that it’s hard to find eco-friendly products this site makes it easy and painless. My question (to myself) is whether I will continue to make the effort to order online and plan ahead like that. But if I can get in the habit, this seems like a great service. Delivered to your home, so you don’t have to lug the bulky packages of this stuff from the car to the house. Plus – I think the prices really were lower – at least lower than my local grocery store.

Oh – and I nearly forgot to mention – they have product reviews as well, which I always love to read. The range of products they sell  is substantial: cleaning products, paper goods, some food items (including the full range of Kashi cereals), makeup, office supplies and more. Pretty cool! And the shipping is fast – it ships the next day and arrives in 3-5 days.

Check it out- it’s free and you might find that it fits nicely into your life!