You tried it, you hated it. Now what?

Now that Wisconsin finally seems out winter, spring cleaning is upon us! While cleaning out my bathroom cabinets, I found several open bottles of health and beauty items that for one reason or another I no longer use. Throwing them away would be wasteful, both for the environment and for my checkbook. Here's a list of ways I've come up with to deal with these products:

Re-purpose it
-Mediocre conditioner works well as shaving cream. Be sure to rinse your skin well afterward. (I can't speak for whether it would work to shave your face, but it seems like it might clog pores.)
-Bar soap can be made into laundry detergent, if you're feeling adventurous. The Simple Dollar gave some detailed instructions recently. (You must check this out!)
-Liquid body wash makes great foaming hand soap, as I recently discussed.


Mix it
Combine a so-so product with a different brand (of the same type of product) can stretch the good one. I did this with a toner that left my skin feeling tacky. I mixed it with a different toner, and ended up with twice as much toner that I did like. Do a small amount of this at a time. You don't want to send good product after bad, and waste an entire bottle of something you really like.

I also used to do this frequently with nail polish. When a color lost it's appeal, I mixed it with other colors to create something one-of-a-kind and really fun.


Change the scent
Add some soap fragrance to liquid soap. This works best with lightly-fragranced soaps or by adding a compatible scent. As with mixing it, try this with a small amount before pouring an entire bottle of fragrance into something stinky. I last did this with a generic brand body wash, which smelled vaguely of toilet paper (kind of dusty, not bad, but not what I want my skin to smell like). I was able to cover that smell easily with citrus soap scent.


Pass it on
If there is nothing really wrong with the product, but you just didn't like it, there's no reason you can't give it to someone else. One caveat, be sure you know the person won't take offense. And offer the item in the right way. You don't want to come off as sounding like, "I can't stand this product, but it's good enough for you," or worse, "I thought you could use this anti-wrinkle cream." I'd stick to family and very close friends for this.


I hope the above tips help you clear out some cabinet space in your bathroom. Plus, you can act like a mad scientist, which is always fun.

Make Your Own Foaming Soap

When you buy foaming soap you're paying for a lot of water and a foaming pump. So, if you've already purchased the pump, you may as well use it again (and again), by mixing foaming soap at home.

Step one, decide what kind of soap you'll be making. I make both hand soap and dish soap (think Dawn Direct Foam). After that, you need to get your hands on a foam pump. You can buy these through Pampered Chef or online, but I'd just buy a bottle of foam soap at the store and save the bottle. Or ask a friend for one, if it was just headed for the recycling bin.

Next, it just comes down to proportions.

For handsoap:
Start with one part liquid soap to about five parts water, and adjust until you get the consistency you like. Hand soap is a little more forgiving than dish soap. The best part is that you can use up all kinds of liquid soap leftovers. Bubble bath works great, as does any body wash that does not have any "bits" in it. You can also add soap scents to mix it up. I personally like to use a bit of Soft Soap style hand soap and a squirt of bubble bath.

For dishsoap:
This can get a little tricky, and will depend on what brand you use, as some are more concentrated. I use Palmolive, and put 1/2 ounce of soap with 12 ounces of water. If you use too much, the soap will clog the pump. Too little and it won't have any cleaning power. The dish soap is great for when you have just one dish you need to wash (for me, that's when I discover the pan I need to make dinner is dirty) and you don't want to use a lot of soap or water. Of course, you can use dish soap to make hand soap, too. In fact, it smells really nice and cleans well!

Once you've mastered your perfect proportions, use a marker to note how high to fill the soap. That way, you don't need to measure every time.

I'm sure you can guess why this project is MSG, but I'll give you the rundown anyway.
-Reduced packaging by not buying all those pumps
-Lessen the carbon footprint of your soap (imagine truckloads of single-use bottles of foam soap traveling across the country, and smile as you refill your bottle)
-Saves LOTS of money
-Use up small portions of soap that might otherwise go wasted
-Less trips to the store to buy soap = less temptation to consume

Pretty significant impact for one quick project!