Inspired by the 4 Weeks of Frugal Family Fun series over at Money Saving Mom, I thought I would share something cheap and fun I did with the kids today.
I didn’t plan this as a family activity, because, you know, I’m pretty much all about me. Mom-ero uno. I was out of facial cleanser, OK actually I just can’t find where the bottle went to, and I was thinking about how nice it was when I used to have a tube of facial scrub that was all invigorating and stuff. I think I might still have that tube, but it’s in the drawer at my mother or mother-in-law’s house in Wisconsin. Not handy.
I was thinking wistfully of my far-away facial scrub while emptying out the coffee grounds from my beloved Aeropress, which expels the grounds in a nice hard-packed chunk. Looking at that chunk of grounds made me think, “Hmm, I wonder if the Internet has any recipes for scrubbing your face with coffee grounds.”
What do you think, readers? Does the Internet have recipes for coffee scrubs? That’s like going into a country pub in Ireland and asking if anyone there knows any drinking songs. I’m pretty sure that Al Gore created the Internet mainly to share recipes for how to make useful stuff out of coffee grounds. And to share cat videos.
When I Googled “coffee facial scrub,” I got 933,000 results. I can’t even remember which link I chose, but I liked the simplicity of the recipe: 2 tablespoons grounds, 1 tablespoon olive oil. Some of the recipes assume that you’ll be grinding some fresh beans just for your scrub, but not me. I used the used grounds. What am I, a millionaire?
I was just mixing up my scrub while the kids were taking their bath. You know what happened next, right? Mommy, what’s that? Mommy, can we have that too?
So I took a little cooking brush and spread oily coffee grounds all over my daughters’ faces. Then I let them rinse themselves off with wash clothes. It made them feel both girly with Mommy but also good and silly. The moment I uploaded the picture of them onto Facebook, Nutmeg, age 8, wanted to know what people said about it.
But the best part of this frugal family fun happened after the girls drained the tub and daddy was up putting them to bed. I drew myself a new hot bath (thank you, new 50-gallon water heater), climbed in, and administered my own coffee facial. I sat with it for awhile, flipping through Parenting, and then scrubbed it in and off with a hot wet washcloth.
Wow. I have to say, my skin feels invigorated. And, contrary to what I expected when I rubbed a bunch of oil into my face, the cleanest it has felt in quite awhile.
Now Epu is enjoying his own bath. I encouraged him to make use of the leftover coffee scrub.
“It’s not just for ladies, you know,” I told him.
“Yeah, actually, it is,” he replied.
Some people do not know how to have frugal family fun.
