Small Spaces = Low Morgtage = Less Material Items= Less Cleaning

Here is a neat link, I got from my friends FB page. It really has me thinking lately about the status quo, when it comes to the American Dream.  My dream does not equal 2,000 or more square feet.  I don't know that I can live in as small of a space as the video below, but I don't know???

RE9 end of month review.

I had some serious homework this past month, as my term is coming to an end and I haven't committed to the weekly review as mentioned.  However, I have been religiously using Arbonne's RE9 every morning and night for the last month, and have noticed very obvious overall skin improvement.  My skin has a more even texture, it feels smooth to the touch, freckles are going away and my pores are not as noticeable. The down-side however is that I have consistently been breaking out, and it never stopped. So I switched up Arbonne products for a more custom formula and my skin is clear and good-to-go.  If you read below you will see a complete skin care system that involves face wash, toner, skin serum for day, a day moisturizer with SPF, a night moisturizer, a neck cream, eye cream, and a skin brightening serum used at night.  My skin is oily and prone to break-out.  The day moisturizer I had to stop using right-away as my skin was very oily with use of this product. I wouldn't consider it an oily moisturizer for most skin types, it actually absorbs nicely, it's just too oily for me.  The night cream is a great product, but I can't use it every night either.  I use it as needed.  Sometimes your skin just gets a little dry and needs some moisturizer and so I use it then.  The day serum is a very pore tightening product and so I can use that anytime I want.  The neck cream was one of my favorite products. I enjoyed the citrus smell and the rich texture the thin, delicate skin the chest, and neck, needs.  I had no real issue with the face wash one way or the other, but I knew from experience that I needed a face wash that has clay based ingredients in it, to help with oily skin. I also have a thicker top layer of skin that's less delicate as many oily faced people do, and so I need a manual scrub ( or a scrub with texture.) I also need an oil drying mask to help with break-outs.  So my new and improved skin care routine is more involved than I just mentioned but here I go...

Step 1. FACE WASH

Arbonne's FC5 Purifying and toning face wash.  This face wash is for normal to oily skin and is great for giving a deep down clean.

Step 2.  TONER

Arbonne's Clear Advantage Toner.  This a toner designed for skin with acne, I also think it works good for oily skin too. It has the extra salicylic Acid to really clean out the skin. I only like to get specific Acne medication through the toner and that it, or it's to drying for me.

Step #3.  SERUM: 

Arnonne's Intensive Renewal Serum.  It's great for reducing pores, fine lines and helping with texture. It has an alpha hydroxy acid, and should be used in conjunction with a SPF.

Step #4  MOISTURIZER:

Arbonne's FC5 Oil-absorbing day moisturizer. 


Step #5 EYE CREAM

Arbonne's RE9 Corrective Eye Cream.

Now it's bed time so my routine is the same as above except instead of the Intensive Renewal Serum I use Arbonne's Revelage Serum:

After toner listed above I use this serum to help with sun spots and freckles.

Then I move to a night time moisturizer that's a little richer, but it's not oily:

After the Night Repair I use RE9's neck cream:

This is so great at getting rid of fine lines and freckling on the chest and neck.

I use the above mentioned RE9 Eye cream.

Lastly as needed I use Arbonne's New Cell scrub, a chemical face mask to help with skin cell renewal turn-over, and a oil absorbing face mask for keeping my skin clear.

So that is it. Although It seems like a lot of work, it's short I promise.  If you have oily skin I hope this helps. 

RE9 Advanced End of Week One.

     So I said I would give an end of week review on RE9 as I'm new to the line.  Please read the previous post regarding What RE9 is and what comes with this skin care line.  First off the claim of Arbonne's Skin Care Line RE9, is that you will see visible results in 24 hours.  This is true.  I can't really say anything else about that claim, because it's a bold claim and one that is hard to believe until you try the line.  With any anti-aging line, my biggest worry is that it's going to make me break out. RE9 did break me out after about three days of using it. However, don't stop reading yet. First my testimonial of any skin care product is based on the fact that I've used almost every skin care line on the market. Secondly I'm and esthetician and went to school to study the skin, and ingredients in products.  Lastly, like any customer my expertise is in my personal results as well.  So yes it did break me out, but only a tiny bit. This may seem counter-productive, however I can play it safe and use fragrance free dove soap, but cause my skin to keep looking horrible (and it did). I mean despite the fact that I am indeed an esthetician, I have horrible skin, mostly due to sun damage and of course to nutrition and stress and aging.  So no, Dove soap bar doesn't break me out, but it also doesn't get rid of my fine lines, ruddiness, large pores, UN-even skin tone, and sun-spots!

      Now back to me breaking out and NOT freaking out.  There is a difference between other anti-aging skin care lines and Arbonne's RE9 Advanced anti-aging skin care line. The difference is simply the ingredients.  Read the back of a night cream of a top line department store anti-aging product.  You will find mineral oils among other gross pole clogging irritants. Now I want to take a minute and write a disclaimer: I do not have a problem with mineral oil per-Se, it's an oil that comes from sheep's wool, which is kind of gross, but of course it's cleaned and sanitized and fairly natural to be honest. So I'm not buying into the anti-mineral oil claims. Petroleum oil on the other hand is horrible for your skin and is not a natural product.  Both mineral and petroleum oil are horrible products for those with acne sensitive skin, or oily skin especially. If you have extremely dry skin, it's still not the best option, but it's probably fine too.  What does mineral, and petroleum oil have to do with anti-aging skin care? Well those two mentioned oils are very cheap and not good for your skin--very pore clogging.  The "high-end" lines all use these cheap oils, which means your not paying for product, your paying for fancy packaging and marketing.  The actual products of high-end skin-care and make-up lines are kind of a joke in the SPA world for estheticians, because they know what's "really" in those products.  So I'm still breaking out, and the only products I'm using are Arbonne, so why am I fine with it? Because...Arbonne's anti-aging lines use vegetable based oils that are very soothing and good for skin.  They are not pore-clogging at all, and can address the moisture loss skin experiences, as well as healing sensitive skin issue's, such as Roseacea, with out the heavy weight oils, other lines use.  My breaking out has nothing to do with the high quality vegetable based oils, that Arbonne uses, it has to do with all the other cell-turn over ingredients that are being used.  Such as Alpha and Beta hydroxy acids, to name a few. It's the acids that are causing me to break out AS THEY SHOULD! Acids in products work to safely remove dead skin cells and help your skin to more quickly turn over new healthy and radiant skin.  In the process of cell turn over a person with clogged pores will experience the pores being cleaned out and forcing the acne to the surface quickly, which also means that once the pores are cleaned out and the acne is cleared up, which acids to a great job of, my skin will not break out at all because my pores will remain clean with continued use of RE9 products.  I might also point out that I'm only breaking out a tiny bit and it's not noticeable to others, only me, because I'm always starring at my face closely in a mirror.  Now if I was using a heavy mineral oil based night cream and I was breaking out, I would be able to recognize that I was breaking out because the mineral oil is clogging my pores and making my skin worse.  RE9 has no pore clogging oils, so I'm aware that I'm breaking out, because my skins being cleaned out to reveal smaller pores and healthier skin.  Lastly while I'm speaking of pores, let me explain something. Pores are a duct in the skin that secrets oil. Pores are good for you, they protect your skin from infection and environmental toxins by providing a layer of non-visible barrier oil.  Some people produce too much oil, and they need help keeping there skin clean. Others do not produce enough oil and have very dry skin that need extra oil (vegetable oils.)  It's a misnomer that you can get rid of pores. You cannot. But you can reduce the appearance of them, by keeping them clean of excessive oil and dirt. That is why leaving make-up on your face while you sleep not only could possible make you break out if you have sensitive skin, but also cause your skin to look aged and dull.  So I'm breaking out, it's do to my skin being cleaned and repaired. 

Now for my review. One thing that is very exciting to me, is how fast the products are absorbed into the skin.  This means I don't have to put on moisturizer then walk around the house waiting for it to absorb before I put on eye cream, then walk around the house for thirty minutes waiting for it to absorb before I apply my make-up.  It's the waiting time between products for them to absorb, that keeps people from taking care of their skin, nobody has all day to wait.  The RE9 products absorb instantly.  Literally right away all of them absorb instantly even the rich and creamy night cream and neck cream (heavy does not have to mean pore clogging oils) that I use. I can do this whole skin care routine in five minutes including washing my face.  My skin looks really great too. The best way I can describe it, is healthy and hydrated.  I look like I drink tons of water, even though I don't.  If my skin looks really amazing after four weeks, which I think it will based on the great results for one week, then RE9 will be an amazing product. My skin started out very damaged, dry, oily, sun-spotted, fine-lined, ruddy, red, and dehydrated.  RE9 has a big job ahead of it's self, which I think it can handle. 

~Love...Monique

Vinegar vs. Bleach

I'm an avid bleach user. I'm aware that it isn't natural, but I love disinfectant it is.  I live on a tropical island that is very humid, were mold is a serious issue.  Bleach gets rid of mold.  So I use bleach. I also enjoy how it makes my "whites whiter."  It's really a cure all in a lot of ways.  My previous post advocated using bleach. 

On a separate note I just got the opportunity to talk to this super smart registered nurse and holistic expert, and she was saying how un-healthy bleach is for the whole body including the lungs.  Obviously I knew this, but somehow bleach wasn't on my radar like all the other cleaners were.  She says she uses vinegar, so I thought I would google it to see what I could come up with.

"Bleach is as much of a toxin as it is a cleaner. Here are some of the hazards:

• Respiratory issues
• Skin burns
• Damage to nervous system
• Exacerbates Asthma
• Headaches
• Vomiting
• Accidents that cause the skin to come into direct contact with bleach or people ingesting it (as many as 700 adults per year)
• Linked to cancer

Many sources say that chlorine by itself is not hazardous and will break down before it reaches the environment, which may be true (but it sounds a little too good to be true). The real hazard of bleach is that it can’t be mixed with ammonia, vinegar or other acids, and even organic matter (and what would you normally clean up with bleach? Organic matter, of course.). Each of these compounds causes a reaction with bleach that emits toxic, potentially carcinogenic fumes."
This was taken from: Food for Thought: Why is Bleach Bad for Me? (September 14th, 2009) retrieved from kitchenstewardship.com

Is there actually a substitute for bleach, and is vinegar a good substitute?

So after some research I found that vinegar is a good substitute, but used in conjunction with Hydrogen peroxide, which has shown to be more effective in killing e-coli and salmonella than bleach. So it would look something like this.  When you have the basic everyday wipe downs to do, you can use a spray bottle and a simple solution of 1/4 cup vinegar and the rest water.  That's it.  Very healthy can be digested in the human body, very effective at getting rid of grease on stoves and sinks, as well as cleaning mirrors (try using a newspaper on mirrors with vinegar instead of paper towels.)  The next spray bottle will have the mixture of half hydrogen peroxide and the other half water.  This needs to be kept in the dark, or in a dark bottle.  And last but not least baking soda.  These three items are all that is needed to clean and disinfect you whole house.  Vinegar does not leave a vinegar smell in your home for very long, so don't fear the smell. 

Notice in this picture the baking soda is in a re-purposed Parmesan cheese container! Great idea.

Here is the deal and this is the same with bleach as well. The chemicals don't disinfect until they are dry.  When you bleach a surface it's not until it dries that is starts working.  To clean with vinegar you might do something like spray the counter with vinegar and wipe everything down. Wait for vinegar to dry, then spray with hydrogen peroxide solution.  That's it! The baking soda is used on any part of your home that you want scrubbed.  The perfect places would be around your sinks where that icky stuff builds up, or in your toilet with a scrub brush..

Tip! Make sure to have your cleaning rags different than the ones you use on your body, duh!

Also consider these two tips as well..

Clean with vinegar for the basic bathroom wipe-downs, on things like spills, toothpaste and makeup.

Take a baby-wipe container and a pack of white re-usable towels, cut towel into baby wipe size, but doubled so they can be folded over if you want them thicker,if not just cut into baby wipe size.  Pour vinegar solution over rags and wa-la! Safe disinfectant towels, even your kids can use! 

You can put a small waste bin in your bathroom for the dirty home-aid counter towels, then just put them straight into the wash when the bin gets full.

In our kitchen and bathroom we use castile soap in peppermint and lavender.  I put about 1/4 cup of castile soap in a water bottle and the rest water and wa-la, again, you have another safe household cleaner.  All of these are safe to inhale, and safe for children.

Pure castile soap can also be used as soap in the shower and as a mopping agent!

Of course I don't like tchotchke's (chachki's) so I'll pass on these, but there cute and look easy to make!

I don't want to turn this into a green living blog, but cleaning with the above mentioned products not only is better for your health, but it also minimizes having fifty-thousand cleaning bottles in every cubard of your houses!

Awesome.  Soooo, if your not feeling the bleach you now have different options!

~Love...Monique

 

Blanco

Hello Students: Welcome to Home Economics 2011 style.

I'm going to take you on a tour of my home and describe things that I have in white that ease my household chores.  First, when you walk into my home you will be lovingly greeted by my dogs who will probably lick you, and jump on you repeatedly. Then we will walk into my kitchen where my hand towels are all white, this is because of food, spills, raw meat etc. end up on these towels and so they should be bleached.  I only have five white kitchen towels and a few white pot holders and glove. This way they can all be bleached together. 

Next we will walk into my bathroom, that for myself and guest is decorated in all white, except my two small white towels and hand soap dispenser that is also with with a plain black letter P.

Guest I'm sure get a sense of being in a hotel. That is a good thing, as guest do not want to get to know about you and your life in a bathroom.  This is a community restroom, as such it should be kept very clean all the time! Keep your personal items in another bathroom (if you have one.)  If you have one bathroom, then keep the counters free of your personal clutter. You should be safe to assume that most people will take a peek into your medicine cabinet or drawers. This is very normal, not weird, so just keep your personal items in a personal part of your home.  Now if you have other bathrooms such as a master bathroom only you see, still keep it clean and organized but this is your personal room. Do as you please.  In every bathroom in my house all towels are white.  For guest this color shows cleanliness, which a guest will expect from you. This is not why I do it though! If every towel you own in every room kitchen included is white, then how much easier is doing the laundry.  Now let's extend this to all bed sheets. Same rules apply for guest.  Guest enjoy a crisp white clean sheet. I enjoy that too. So keep all sheets white in every room including children's. How much easier would doing laundry be if all your towels and all your sheets were white, would you be sorting less?  Now another reason using white is beneficial is for replacement purchases. If a towel, or sheet starts to look old, or worn out, then you can easily replace one white towel with another. Unless the towels are being displayed (and if they are they shouldn't be used) then nobody will notice the difference between one white towel and another.  This concept is even more important with sheets. I think you know were I'm going with this.  If you are grabbing sheets based on bed size; twin in a child's room, then you do not have to find pairs or sets, you just grab a fitted and loose sheet and pillow case and call it a day. White is white, it doesn't matter.  Now I'm not against using one color scheme for the ease of laundry such as all yellow, all beige, all black, but the problem with colors is the ability to bleach out germs.  Heard of bed-bugs?  *Tip when your washing your white sheets with bleach, make sure to use hot-water.  This system helps with allergies too.  I'm not preferential to fabric softener on sheets, it does make them soft and smell good, but the softness isn't good for skin, and the smell is artificial + it takes the crispness out of them.  ~Hang dry, if you live in an area that it's feasible. That is a trend that should stay. 

I also purposely use the color white in my bathroom's for decoration. I explained above that white is a good color for community bathrooms that guest use. But for style and decoration purposes it can save you money.  How often do you feel the need to re-decorate your bathroom? There is nothing wrong with this, but the whole bathroom set including the shower curtain, mats, and soap counter items really add up, and you haven't even added pictures or candles etc.  So why not use white and add accessories as you see fit. For example:

These above "Paris themed" bathrooms set's are cute, but don't appeal to the masses. The cost of set's like those are expensive too. Since the above set its a trend that a person will likely get tired of quickly because there is so much going on, then it will also get thrown out for another "themed" set.  The set above is also kind of tacky. Obviously not at all how Paris really is. If you like Paris so much, then try to show that through photography of Paris and keep the rest of the bathroom more simple to make re-decorating less of a need. 

Plus most bathrooms in Paris look like this:

Also consider a natural approach to decorating.  The idea of using white doesn't have to be modern, but also antique. 

Let's play a game called what do you like better this or this?

This?

or....

This?

 or...

This?

This one is my favorite and it expresses my point the most about changing the wall art to change the theme instead of buying cheap plastic bathroom sets that are actually pretty expensive when purchased multiple times.

Please read the next post to learn about why bleach is no bueno! And how Vinegar may be a safter option and equally as effective.

~Love...Monique

Houston Texas, Wants Eco Friendly Skin Care!

My previous post on the Pumpkin Enzyme Facial Peel appealed to my long-time friend Joe. He tried it out, and said his skin was looking pretty good and it tasted good! If you don't know what I'm referencing, see previous post. 

Thanks Joe!

RE9

Before I do a post on how using white in your house can make housework easier, I wanted to talk about the skin care product by Arbonne called RE9. I personally have no experience with it. I'm going to use it though for 4 weeks and do an update on my skin at the end of each week. I will also do an initial post now on how is made my skin feel on day 1. But besides that I will update you on the product for the next four weeks.  I think that may be about enough time to start to see changes (or not.)  This is what I know right now:

• Arbonne is a direct sells company that has products formulated in Switzerland, and made and distributed in the U.S. 
• The company has been in existence for around thirty years. 
• Arbonne uses botanically based ingredients
• They do not test on animals
• They are 100% vegan certified
• They do not use animal by-products, Mineral Oils, Artificial Ingredients, Artificial Fragrances, petroleum-based oil ingredients
• They use plant based ingredients, essential oils, plant's vitamin's minerals, and anti-oxidants, in strong doses.

That's all I know. Now it sounds good, but my skin is very sensitive and there are limited products that I can use especially anti-aging ones that don't make me brake out. Typically if I want to anti-age my skin I have to use peels, but not moisturizer.

According to Arbonne's website RE9 Advanced contains:
ingredients proven to nourish skin and combat free radical damage. Key plant nutrients are available to soften and condition, protect and adjust to the skin's specific needs. Vitamin C is also available for the production of elastin and collagen.

Here are some of the key ingredients found in RE9 Advanced:
Kojic Acid - which is a highly effective, natural skin lightening agent that reduces the appearance of long-term sun and environmental damage.
BHA - with antioxidant properties helps to visibly tighten and smooth skin, and reduce the appearance of brown spots and fine lines.
Peptides - which increase skin thickness, produces significant quantities of collagen to restore the dermal matrix.

Alpha and Beta Hydroxy Acids - Alpha breaks down protein bonds, increasing cell proliferation.
Alpha Lipoic Acid - which is an antioxidant that penetrates skin quickly and absorbs into the skin's cells to increase cell metabolism."

~Photo courtesy of google images  RE9 Advanced after two weeks~


Now for my personal testimony. I've only used the RE9 Advanced Full product line one time. The very first thing that blew me away was that all the products, serums, lotions, and creams didn't leave my skin feeling greasy or oily. This is very big for me, because it's almost impossible to use a heavy night cream for anti-aging without looking greasy and getting breakouts. Every single product absorbed into my skin and made it feel supple.  The smell was very light but noticeable. It was a clean cinnamon smell. It was nice!  Lastly the Renewing Serum had an instant tingling feeling. It wasn't irritating but noticeable.  I can not speak of results that's why I'll write about it once a week for four weeks.  I'll know if I'm going to break out by the end of week one! So we'll see.  I barely have any noticeable fine line (yet) so there will not be much anti-aging in the wrinkle department, however there will be in the texture of my skin which isn't so great right now, also in the appearance of my skin which has freckles and some sun-spots ( I live in the tropics.)  Okay that's it for for RE9. I'll post in about seven days. 

~Love...Monique

The non-color white, is very much a color.

White...is not a mere absence of colour; it is a shining and affirmative thing, as fierce as red, as definite as black...God paints in many colours; but He never paints so gorgeously, I had almost said so gaudily, as when He paints in white. - G. K. Chesterton

The Color white, used in design:
Positive: Hygiene, sterility, clarity, purity, cleanness, simplicity, sophistication, efficiency.

How do these photo's make you feel?

It must be fun for this pre-teen/teenager to go on a scavenger hunt for her school clothes. Do you think this is the type of space that can evoke concentration during study time?

 This looks like a pretty standard American Living room.  Can you feel really relaxed watching t.v. in this room?

 Again this looks like a pretty normal American Kitchen. Typically the kitchen becomes a large junk drawer.  The most random items a person could own, always end up in the kitchen. The one room that most people spend the most time in (as a family) over the living room, tends to be the least inviting!

Why don't we feel the need to clean up after ourselves. So this one is going to be a discussion on the sexes.  I bet most parents of teen-age boys expect a room like this, after-all it's not horrible.  But why do we expect this from young men? Does the start of low-expectation's reflect on the rest of societies ideals of who is then expected to maintain cleanliness (IE, women?)  I'm not getting all feminist, but boys and men should not be encouraged to be slobs. On a deeper level, we should also encourage our children to take care of what's theirs. To appreciate what the parents have purchased for them.

 This one actually make me feel sad, because no little girl should have to be in such a messy room, even if the room is essentially nice, and clean (as this one seems to be.) The clutter impedes the child from having the space necessary for creativity. The over-dose of toys shows children, that none of them are really important. It's the start of senseless shopping habits. I bet if I were to clean that room, half the toys would be broken or unusable in some way!

 Again, I like this room because there really isn't anything wrong with it. The closet is organized, it's fine. I just don't think every room in every house needs to be packed to the brim with items. Even if the items are used, it's just to much. And if this is an adults room, does it produce the effects of relaxation or romance?

Okay, I'm only going to say one thing. Why are there rocks in the sink? Okay maybe two things, and why is there Altoids in the bathroom, isn't there Colgate there? Empty roll of toilet paper, can't be thrown away?

How do these photo's make you feel?

I'm not going to act like I don't see that some of these pictures are of high-end designing, and out of most people's price ranges. There is a common theme to me, which is no clutter. No clutter means no mess to clean up. It means space to move in. You can think in these spaces, and relax too.  Less clutter means less money goes to JUNK and more money goes to nice furniture pieces.  There is also the common theme of the color white being used.  To much white can be sterile, however a lot of white can be very clean and easy to deal with mentally.

The next post is going to be on how white can make housework easier! Stay tuned...

I think I should clarify something really quick. This is not a blog about organizing junk in a person's house. Instead it's a blog about throwing it out, selling it, and then not buying it back again! To not replace junk with more junk. You get rid of it, then you keep your money and let your wallet grow a little bit for once. 

"Just as black is total absorption, so white is total reflection. In effect, it reflects the full force of the spectrum into our eyes. Thus it also creates barriers, but differently from black, and it is often a strain to look at. It communicates, "Touch me not!" White is purity and, like black, uncompromising; it is clean, hygienic, and sterile. The concept of sterility can also be negative. Visually, white gives a heightened perception of space. The negative effect of white on warm colours is to make them look and feel garish."
Quoted from: Psychological Properties of Colors (October 25, 11) Retrieved from: http://www.colour-affects.co.uk/psychological-properties-of-colours