"Stuff I Like" Sunday: Beauty on the Cheap

You know that bottle of aspirin you carry around for children-induced headaches and cramps and stuff? Well, let me suggest a more effective way to use it: mash it up and smear it on your face.

Nope, I'm not kidding.

For this edition of "Stuff I Like" Sunday, we're looking at the humble aspirin ... as a beauty treatment. I first read about this phenomenon back when I still had time to look good, on a beauty product review/swap site called Makeup Alley (you can read over a THOUSAND user reviews of the aspirin mask here. You have to sign up ... but don't worry, it's free and they don't spam you. Or just Google "aspirin mask" and you'll get umpteen-bazillion results).

At first I was skeptical - people regularly fork over small fortunes for skincare products, and you're telling me that a $2 bottle of aspirin is gonna produce equally miraculous results? But when I tried it for myself, I loved it - and it's still one of the tricks in my (rarely-used, these days) beauty arsenal.

So what do you do? You get a bottle of aspirin - make sure it's the plain, un-coated kind - and wet it with a few drops of water until you can mush it into a paste. Then you can use it as-is (although when it dries, it tends to flake off pretty badly) or you can mix it with another type of face mask, or yogurt, or honey, or moisturizer, or whatever you've got on hand that you don't mind smearing all over your face. I normally use it in the shower, putting it on first thing and letting it work while I stand there ignoring my kids at the door clean the rest of my dirty-girl self.

The aspirin paste is kinda gritty, so it's a great exfoliant. Combine that with the fact that aspirin is made of salicylic acid, which is also an exfoliant (and one of the main ingredients in anti-acne products), and you've got a treatment that makes your skin feel like silk. Like a baby's behind. Like buttah. Not only that, but I find that regular use helps keep my skin clear. No pimples = awesome.

Obviously, if you're allergic to aspirin, don't try this. But then again, if you're smart enough to know you're allergic to aspirin, you're probably smart enough to figure that out for yourself.

Now run along to the drugstore and buy yourself a bottle of uncoated aspirin. And then pass on the beauty savings to your favorite blogger. My address is .... ;)