Making It: Radical Home Ec for a Post-Consumer World (5 page)

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A Close Shave

PREPARATION:
1 min

When gentlemen go before the mirror to shave, they have the choice of using aerosol foams comprised of who-knows-what, or soap and a shaving brush. The shaving brush ritual is nice but soap can dry the skin, leaving it tight and uncoforable. Shaving with oil is less common, but one that is worth exploring.

There are shaving oils on the market, but despite their high prices, they are basically scented vegetable oil. Instead, try shaving with olive oil. Plain olive oil gives a smooth, close shave; cleans the skin as it works; and moisturizes it, too. How’s that for a one-step product? Erik converted to oil after his first try. And of course shaving oil works well on legs—or whatever else you feel inclined to shave.

If you are prone to razor bumps on your face or legs, a light scrub with baking soda and warm water prior to shaving, as described in Project 9, sweeps away dead skin and softens the hair, which help prevent infection. Constant scrubbing might be harsh on your skin, so if you shave daily, you might find it works best to use baking soda only once or twice a week. Be sure to rinse well before you start to shave, because you wouldn’t want salty baking soda residue in a shaving cut.

YOU’LL NEED

• Olive oil. If you find you don’t like the feel or smell of olive oil, try other rich, quality oils like sweet almond, sesame, or grapeseed oil—but don’t use cheap cooking oils, like corn or peanut oil.
  
• Bottle, such as a repurposed hand soap dispenser
  
• Essential oil (optional). Citrus, sandalwood, rosemary, and lavender, or some mix thereof, are classic scents for both men’s and women’s shaving products.
  

PUTTING IT TOGETHER

If you want to add scent, transfer the oil from its original container to a smaller bottle, then add a few drops of any essential oil you like and give it a shake to mix. Remember, essential oils are quite strong. Preferences vary, but you probably won’t need to use more than 5 to 10 drops of essential oil per cup of olive oil.

Massage a small amount of the oil into warm, wet skin. There’s no need to slather it on. It may be strange at first to shave with oil alone if you’re accustomed to foams and creams. You might even miss the entertainment of cutting neat paths through foam, but think about how much easier cleanup will be! Just shave, rinse with water, and pat dry. Don’t wash afterward. Leave what little oil remains on your skin as a moisturizer. In fact, if you’re shaving your face, go ahead and massage the oil over your whole face before you shave, not just the beard area, so you don’t end up with a baby-soft jaw and a craggy, dry brow.

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A Roman Bath

PREPARATION:
1 min

This project was inspired by ancient history. The Greeks and Romans knew about soap, but they didn’t use it to bathe. They cleaned themselves with olive oil, massaging it over their bodies and then scraping off the oil, dirt, and dead skin with a curved device called a strigil.

Next time you are in a museum with collections from ancient Greece and Rome, look in the display cases for these little bronze or bone squeegees as well as the bottles that held their perfumed oils. You will also see them being used in art of the period depicting bathing scenes.

Soap isn’t necessary for daily cleansing. In fact, it dries the skin with overuse, leading to all sorts of problems, from uncomfortable dryness to breakouts. It is perfectly possible to clean both your face and your body with oil alone. Oil dissolves impurities and feeds the skin.

YOU’LL NEED

A GOOD OIL FOR WASHING.
We use olive oil because it is widely available and relatively inexpensive and because it’s always around the house. Olive oil will not block your pores or cause breakouts. Castor oil is a powerful cleansing oil and is often combined with olive oil for this purpose, especially for oily skin. Or try sweet almond oil, grapeseed oil, or avocado oil—each has its own unique characteristics but are more expensive than olive oil. Some oils are best left for cooking: Coconut oil is rather drying and heavy on the skin, so it’s not ideal for cleansing. Cheap oils (like corn, peanut, or canola oil) will not benefit skin at all.

ESSENTIAL OIL
to scent your cleansing oil (optional). Be aware that some essential oils, like peppermint, might irritate your skin. A few drops of lavender essential oil is a safe bet.

PUTTING IT TOGETHER

FACE WASHING

Under normal cleansing regimes, delicate facial skin is first stripped of all its natural oils with soap, then shocked back into pH balance with acidic toners, then rehydrated with moisturizers. Cleansing your face with oil reduces the number of steps in your routine, saves money, and yields healthy, glowing skin. Oil washing is particularly useful during the winter, when the skin is under constant assault from cold, dry air.

Pour a coin-size dollop of oil in your palm. Warm it by rubbing your hands together, then gently massage it into your face, using your fingertips only. This light massage is beneficial for your skin and a necessary part of the process. Enjoy it. You are both encouraging your skin to renew itself and dissolving impurities. Remove the oil with a warm, wet washcloth. It should be a smooth cloth—you don’t want to scrub your face. Oil is an exfoliating agent in itself, so you don’t need to be rough. If you use a white cloth, you’ll see all the dirt and oil that you’re lifting off. If your skin feels tight afterward, follow up the cleansing by massaging in a little more oil or applying a moisturizer.

BODY WASHING

We wish we could do this after a long soak in a decadent Roman bath. Instead, we have to settle for the end of a shower, when a little time in warm water has opened pores and softened the skin. Turn off the water and, while still in the shower, smooth a generous amount of oil over your body. Then use a loofah sponge or a washcloth to lift dirt and body oils, pausing once in while to rinse out the sponge or cloth. This scrubbing invigorates the skin and awakens the body. The best way to massage the skin is in long strokes leading from the extremities toward the heart. When you’re done, take a quick rinse. After you dry off, you can apply yet more oil or another moisturizer, if you feel you need it.

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Body Polish/Hand Scrub

PREPARATION:
5 min

Fancy jars of salt scrubs are staples of gifty boutiques, but it’s easy to make your own. As we saw in the last project, oil is a great cleanser. Combined with salt, oil becomes a substance that works two ways: first, as a fancy, spa-quality body polish; and second, as a down-and-dirty hand cleaner that strips away sticky chain grease and engine grime.

There’s no need to use harsh solvents for a hand cleaner—oil dissolves oil very nicely. Erik barely knows what the word
exfoliate
means, but he has a jar of scrub that he uses after he works on his bike. The difference between a body polish and a hand cleaner is nothing but marketing.

You can whip up a jar of scrub in 5 minutes, either for yourself or as a gift.

YOU’LL NEED

• Clean, widemouthed container with a lid
  
• Fine-grain sea salt (Coarse salt is too hard on skin.)
  
• Oil. You can use olive oil or, if the mood strikes you, more expensive, quality skin oils like sweet almond or avocado or grapeseed. Cheap oils like corn oil or canola oil work well enough in a hand cleaner but won’t do much for the skin. Use oil that you’ve infused with herbs (see Project 35) to harness their delicate scents, colors, and healing properties.
  
• Essential oil (optional)
  

PUTTING IT TOGETHER

Fill the container about three-quarters full of the sea salt, then stir in the oil bit by bit until you have a slurry, something that feels good to your fingers—neither too dry and grainy nor too runny.

If you wish, scent the scrub with a few drops of essential oil. Be careful with camphoraceous oils like peppermint and eucalyptus, because they might feel a little intense on freshly scrubbed skin.

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Homegrown Medicine

Cuts and bites, coughs and colds, upset stomachs, and aches and pains. These are the little emergencies that send us running to our medicine cabinet. It turns out that a lot of these common ailments can be treated with plants from your garden, plants that can be easily foraged, or ingredients you’ll find in your pantry.

Directions for how to make the medicinal honeys and herbal salves, tinctures, and infusions mentioned here appear in Projects 35 and 36. You will find descriptions of useful weeds in Project 34.

BEE, WASP, AND HORNET STINGS

First, for bee stings, remove the stinger immediately with your fingers. Contrary to popular belief, you don’t have to scrape it out with a credit card. Wasps and hornets don’t leave a stinger behind, but the rest of the treatment is the same. Chilling the sting site is the best way to minimize your body’s response to the venom. Wash the bite with soap and water if it’s available, then apply ice or a cold compress. If no ice is available, submerge the bite in cold water. Taking an antihistamine will also help minimize itching and swelling. It may not be homemade, but it is sensible. Plantain will help too. See “Bug Bites and Local Irritations,” below.

BLEEDING, SUCH AS FROM SHAVING CUTS OR KITCHEN ACCIDENTS

Apply a yarrow leaf
(Achillea millefolium)
directly to the wound. Bruise the leaf a little first to bring out the oils. Yarrow not only inhibits bleeding, it is antiseptic as well. Try it—you’ll be amazed at how fast it works. To stop a nosebleed, bruise a yarrow leaf, roll it up, and put it up the nose. Yarrow is easy to grow in the garden, but it grows wild, too. Make a yarrow salve to use on cuts when the plant is unavailable.

BUG BITES AND LOCAL IRRITATIONS

Common plantain
(Plantago major)
is an ubiquitous and useful weed found in lawns and sidewalk cracks just about everywhere in the city or countryside of North America. (See Project 34, Foraging Feral Greens, to learn how to identify this plant.) Chew fresh leaves and smear the pulp juice directly on the bite. You’ll find the taste bitter, but it’s not poisonous. In fact, we add young plantain leaves to salads sometimes. In the winter, soak dried leaves in hot water to rehydrate them and then apply to the irritation. For more serious situations, apply wet, pulverized leaves as a poultice; put a whole leaf over the poultice to hold it in place; and put a bandage over that. Plantain salve is good for all sorts of skin eruptions and irritations.

BURNS

The juice from a fresh-cut
Aloe vera
leaf works well, as does honey. Aloe has cooling properties that feel good immediately after a burn, while raw honey can help prevent infection and scarring. You can combine the two of them to make a burn gel. To treat sunburn, try soaking washcloths in cold, strong black tea and laying them over the burnt skin. When the cloths get warm, refresh them with more cold tea.

COLDS

At the first suspicion that she may be getting a cold, Kelly starts eating raw garlic, at which time Erik reminds her that there’s no scientific basis for any sort of cold cure, to which Kelly replies that since she started eating garlic, her colds are never as bad as his and they last half as long. If you’d like to give her method a try, eat a clove of raw garlic the first moment you suspect you have a cold. The most palatable way to do this is to butter a cracker or slice of bread and spread crushed garlic over the butter. Butter cuts some of the sting. Sprinkle some salt over it all, and it almost tastes good. Eat at least two cloves a day, one in the morning and one at night, and keep doing this for 3 to 5 days, until you’re well out of danger. Don’t use roasted or canned garlic, because heat kills garlic’s natural antibiotic qualities.

COUGHS

A spoonful of honey will go a long way toward quieting any cough. For dry, tickling coughs, drink tea made of fresh or dried mullein leaf
(Verbascum thapsus),
but be sure to strain the tea after brewing to remove the tiny hairs on the leaves. Several other herbs that may be growing in your yard are good for coughs. The following herbs have expectorant qualities: common plantain
(Plantago major),
red clover flowers
(Trifolium pratense),
and fresh thyme
(Thymus vulgaris).
Licorice
(Glycyrrhiza glabra)
is probably not growing in your yard, but if you have licorice root on hand (perhaps because you use the roots for toothbrushing), it makes a tea with wonderful soothing qualities and good flavor. It could be combined with any other of the herbs already mentioned. To make a tea, use 1 teaspoon crushed licorice root to 1 cup water, and simmer for 10 minutes.

CUTS AND SCRAPES

Honey is a potent antibacterial ointment. The best sort to use is raw, because pasteurization (heating) degrades the healing properties, but any honey will do in a pinch. We always keep a small jar of raw honey in the medicine cabinet. It might crystallize after a long time, but it never goes bad. Smear honey on the wound just as you would apply a topical antibiotic, then put a bandage over the cut. It may sting slightly, but that twinge doesn’t last more than a moment.
Aloe vera
is good for cuts, too.

DEHYDRATION

In cases of chronic vomiting and/or diarrhea, dehydration is a serious concern, especially for children. After a serious loss of fluid, rehydration with plain water is impossible because the body’s supply of minerals has been depleted. Dissolve ½ teaspoon table salt (sodium chloride), ½ teaspoon salt substitute (potassium chloride, which is found near the salts and seasonings in the grocery store), ½ teaspoon baking soda (sodium bicarbonate), and 6 teaspoons sugar in 1 quart water. If you don’t have access to salt substitute, make a solution of 1 teaspoon salt and 6 teaspoons sugar. This second mix lacks potassium, so as soon as possible, introduce potassium-rich foods like banana, avocado, papaya, spinach, sweet potato, or wild nettle greens. Whichever hydrating solution you use, feed it spoon by spoon, if necessary, until the patient tolerates it, then give as much as the person can drink. Even if the patient is vomiting what you give, some of the liquid will stay down, so keep spooning.

DIARRHEA

Make extrastrong tea out of fresh or dried blackberry leaves
(Rubus fruiticosus)
or red raspberry leaves
(Rubus
idaeus)—about 2 tablespoons of leaf per cup of water—and drink it on the hour as needed. Harvest these leaves in the spring when they’re most potent, then dry them for convenient use. Be sure not to mistake poison ivy for these plants. When not in fruit, they look somewhat similar and grow in the same places. Just remember that poison ivy plants have no prickles. If you want to buy the leaves, raspberry leaf tea is easy to find in the tea section of health food stores, but blackberry leaves must be ordered from herbal supply companies.

HEADACHES

Headaches arise from so many causes that it is difficult to describe a universal treatment. Many headaches are caused by stresses to the neck muscles arising from the head-forward position of driving, biking, and using a computer. When a headache strikes, it’s a good idea to stop whatever you’re doing and change position. Do some gentle neck stretches, or lie down and try to relax your whole body. Rub your temples and nape with lavender, peppermint, or rosemary essential oil. Carry a blend of these oils, either diluted in a little bottle of neutral oil or in the form of a salve. If your hands and feet get cold when you have a headache, soak them in very warm water. It helps the head, believe it or not. Even better, take a warm bath with the above essential oils sprinkled in the water—only be sparing with the mint, because it can make your skin tingle long after you’ve left the bath. Try putting gentle pressure on your closed eyes with the heels of your hands, or use a flaxseed-filled eye pillow. And yes, take a pain reliever. See the entry on pain.

ITCHY, RED, IRRITATED SKIN

Take a bath and add a cup of baking soda to the water—this is our house cure-all for mild conditions. More ambitious but highly effective for serious itching, such as that caused by chicken pox, is an oatmeal bath. Grind regular oatmeal into a fine powder and add a couple of cups of the powder to bathwater. Keep the water temperature comfortably tepid, since hot water will only worsen angry skin. Common chickweed
(Stellaria media),
a ubiquitous weed, is soothing and cooling. Make a strong tea with fresh or dried chickweed; when the tea is cool, use it as a skin wash or add it to bathwater. It’s well worth having a chickweed salve around for general use, but if you’re out and about you can just pulverize or masticate chickweed and apply it straight to the skin.

MUSCLE ACHES AND STRAINS

Nothing feels better on overworked muscles than a warm bath with Epsom salts. It’s a classic treatment, and it really works. Also excellent for all bruises, strains, pulls, and other muscle and joint injuries is comfrey oil or comfrey salve
(Symphytum officinale).

NASAL CONGESTION

If your nose is miserably plugged up and runny, irrigate your nasal passages with lukewarm saltwater to flush out excess mucus and soothe inflamed tissues. Mix up a solution of ¼ teaspoon sea salt (not iodized salt) in 1 cup lukewarm water and load it into a bulb syringe. Standing over a sink, ease a bulb syringe just a little way up one nostril, aiming it at the top your same-side ear. Squeeze gently until you empty the syringe. You should feel water passing to the back of your throat, your mouth, or even your opposite nostril. Flush each nostril twice. If you don’t have a bulb syringe, lean over a bowl of saltwater, block one nostril and snort the water up the other. It’s a mess, but you’ll feel so much better afterward.

SAFETY

If you’re allergic to aspirin, don’t drink willow bark tea. All medical precautions regarding aspirin should be applied to willow bark tea.

PAIN

Salicin, the active ingredient in a traditional pain remedy, willow bark, was identified in the 19th century and refined into acetylsalicylic acid, aka aspirin. While willow bark and aspirin are not the same thing, they behave similarly in the human body. Willow bark tea is a mild but effective treatment for pain, especially low, throbbing pain such as that from headache, backache, and arthritis. Simmer 1 or 2 teaspoons crushed dried willow bark in 1 cup water for 15 minutes, then let it steep covered for another half hour. Drink up to 3 or 4 cups a day, as needed. You can also use a tincture of willow bark for convenience and portability. Take 1 teaspoon of tincture at a time, mixing it in a little liquid before swallowing, up to three or four times a day. See Project 35 to learn how to make tinctures.

Willow bark tea is usually made from the fresh young bark of one of these four trees: white willow
(Salix alba),
black crack willow
(Salix fragilis),
purple willow
(Salix purpurea),
and black willow
(Salix nigra),
though other willows have similar properties. You can buy willow bark at health food stores and through herbal suppliers, or you can gather it in the wild. Harvest the bark from young willow branches in the spring, when the bark is easy to peel. Neatly prune a small branch so that you don’t scar the tree. Peel off the bark, cut it into thin strips, and dry it for storage—or use it fresh.

PIMPLES

Not an emergency, but mortifying enough. Dab raw honey on pimples before you go to bed. Honey keeps the pimples from becoming infected and cools and moisturizes angry skin.

SORE THROAT

Gargle frequently with 1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar (preferably raw) diluted in a glass of water or with 1 teaspoon sea salt in a glass of warm water. With luck, you’ll stop the infection it its tracks. Also, sip warm water mixed with lemon and honey—use infused, medicinal honey for extra punch. For a throat that has already been ripped raw, make a soothing demulcent tea out of flaxseed. Just simmer 2 teaspoons flaxseed in 2 cups water until the volume is reduced by half, leaving 1 cup of liquid. Strain the seeds out and drink it hot, because when it cools it will thicken to the consistency of egg whites.

STUFFY HEAD/IRRITATED SINUSES

Make a steam tent by pouring boiling water into a bowl on your kitchen table and adding aromatic herbs like mint, rosemary, eucalyptus, and lavender or grated fresh ginger. If you have fresh herbs, add them by the fistful. Dried herbs work, too—even mint tea bags will work. You can also sprinkle essential oils of the same herbs in the hot water. Lean over the bowl, drape a towel over yourself and the bowl, and breathe the steam until the water cools.