Fall and winter are the harshest times of the year for our skin. During these seasons, the skin needs extra care to keep it moisturized. To help you keep your skin healthy and radiant through the holiday season, here are a few fall and winter organic skin care tips, to help you welcome the New Year feeling and looking good.

1. Drink Plenty of Water

Drinking lots of water will help you to hydrate your skin. When you go outside your home, it is advisable to bring a bottle of water, juice, or tea. Hot herbal tea can do wonders in the cold. Drinking these can help your skin maintain a healthy glow even during the coldest winter’s day.

2. Exfoliate dead skin cells away

A body and facial scrub can remove dead skin cells, keep your skin feeling fresh. You don’t need to buy expensive products for the job. There are various exfoliation recipes you can use at home using items you find in your kitchen.

3. Use Organic Moisturizers

After you exfoliate your skin, the next step is to moisturize it. There are various organic skin moisturizers that are made from natural ingredients. These contain none of the harsh chemical preservatives that might do more harm than good to your skin.

4. Don’t Forget to Wear Sunscreen

Just because summer is over doesn’t mean that you should not apply sunscreen when going out. Use sunscreen with SPF 15 or more. There are sunscreens on the market that are made out of organic ingredients. Some sunscreens also act as moisturizers, thus hitting two birds with one stone. A good sunscreen will protect your skin from the harsh environment.

5. Wear your Gloves

Remember, when your mom makes all the fuzz about wearing gloves during wintertime, you should consider her advise.  Don’t leave home in the cold without a pair of gloves. When buying gloves, look for those made out of hemp or other organic material. Gloves will help your hands stay warm and dry, and will protect your skin from the harsher affects of the elements.

6. Take an Organic Oil Bath

An organic oil bath can be relaxing, as well as hydrate your skin. A lavender bath relaxes and nourishes the skin, while calming the senses. A few drops of the oil in your bath water will do wonders for you after a tiring day at the office (or, in case of the Christmas Season, the mall).

7. Protect your Lips with Organic Lip Balm

Your lips will often get chapped during fall and winter.  This is not just because of the cold – our use of indoor heaters during cold weather is one cause of chapped lips.  The best way to avoid chapping is to use an organic lip balm. Always keep one in your pocket or purse.  Sometimes you won’t predict when you will need it.  Anyone who has suffered from chapped lips can tell you that lip balm is something one should never be without!

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Cleaning up one’s life and helping clean up the environment at the same time really difficult.  Remembering the little things goes a long way.  Here are a few tips and reminders you can use to help protect the environment, in your everyday life.

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In the summer, the hot sun blesses us in so many ways.  It brings people out of their homes and together; it warms our swimming pools and feeds the plants in our gardens.  There is also one thing the sun is perfect for, LAUNDRY.  Hanging up your clothes to dry and letting the sun do all the work not only can save energy, but it can save your clothes. Not to mention, it is really easy.

The clothes dryer accounts for 5.8% of residential energy use per year and is the third biggest user of electricity in your home according to the US Department of Energy.  According to Laundrylist.org, if each American hung their clothes up to dry, we would save enough energy to close down several power plants.

Another plus: Hanging  your clothes to dry not only saves energy but it also saves your clothes.  When clothes are tumbled dried, the fibers of your clothes are broken down, which causes your clothes to wear much quicker.  Where do you think dry lint comes from?  If your clothes are hung up to dry they can last longer, which in turn saves the material needed to buy new clothes.  It also decreases the amount of clothes thrown out into the land fill.

Here are a few simple tips from  the Queen of Clean and a few of my own to help you on the road to line drying your clothes.

• A tension curtain rod hung up in a laundry room can make a great place to hang up clothes.  Project Laundry List also has many styles of clothes lines to choose from.
• Want eye-popping whites?  Hang your clothes in direct sunlight.
• Use caution when hanging colored clothes in direct sun.  Just as the sun bleaches your whites, it can bleach your colored clothes.
• Hanging clothes on plastic hangers with sloped ends will help them dry without “shoulder dimples.”
• Don’t like how your clothes can be a little stiff after line drying?  Toss them in the dryer with a wet washcloth or hand towel for 5 minutes and it will soften the clothes.
• The sun and a little lemon juice works wonders on stains .  Pour a little lemon juice on the stain, sit it out in the sun for 30 minutes and then wash.  No more stains!
• Clothes will have fewer wrinkles when line dried if you don’t spin to much water out of them before you hang them up.  Shut off your washer half way through the spin cycle and then hang up your clothes. You also save a little extra energy that way.

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