My Go-To Winter Exfoliator

For my daily exfoliation routine I use exfoliating cleansing wipes to take off my makeup at night, and when I'm in the shower, I use a natural exfoliating sponge. This generally does the trick, but sometimes I want my skin to feel extra exfoliated! And in the winter, I want some good moisturizing too, but I have to be careful because my skin is so oily. Even oil-free moisturizers can make me break out.

I've made my own home-made exfoliators for years (there are some great recipes all over the web), and that used to be the only way I exfoliated my face. I would keep a dry mixture of coffee grounds, almond flour, and brown sugar in a little container in the shower. The moisture from the water would be enough to spread it around easily, and it worked great (it was also easily portable for when I traveled). The problem was: the particles would stick to the shower walls and shower liner and would go bad pretty quickly. This meant a lot more work cleaning the shower and either taking down and washing the liner or buying and installing new ones more often. I was just getting tired of the extra work, hence the routine I now use.

But every once in a while, I want to pamper myself, and this is what I do: I take some plain yogurt or sour cream (the dairy is good for your skin - I believe it's the lactic acids) and mix in some coffee grounds, cornmeal, and honey. The coffee and cornmeal do a bang-up job of exfoliating, the dairy makes my skin look better, and the honey provides some moisture without going overboard. My skin looks and feels so good when I'm done! I usually make a lot so that I have extra for my back, arms, etc. Here's what the mixture looks like:

It looks a little bit like melted cookies-and-cream ice cream, but trust, me it's not as tasty. You can make exfoliators that taste good though too. In the past, I've made yogurt, brown sugar, and almond flour exfoliators with spices like cinnamon and cloves, and if a little bit gets inside my mouth, so be it. Although sugar is good for your skin, it doesn't provide the kind of exfoliating power I'm looking for because it dissolves in the yogurt, which is why I gravitate towards the cornmeal and coffee grounds for that.

Pamper yourself some time this winter and make your own exfoliator to your own taste! Aside from the ingredients I mentioned, other common additions are oats and other kinds of ground nuts. If you have super dry skin, you could make an oil based exfoliator with olive oil or other face-friendly oil (like almond or jojoba oil). In that case, sugar would be a great idea, since it won't dissolve in the oil like it does in yogurt (oil and sugar are the base for sugar scrubs, which I like to use for my lips and legs). 

Happy Exfoliating!