How to: Beauty With Baking Soda

For some people, it’s spiders. Others? Heights. For me, my phobia lies in the kitchen sink – the dirty, plughole thingy, to be exact and grammatically incorrect.

Yes, I can’t stand dirty plugholes. Crackers, right? Well, I tell you, it just gets my goat if they’re not clean. So, after much trial and tussle with the likes of Mr. Muscle, I recently found my daily nemesis could be nixed with a simple swoop of baking soda.

Cheap. Easy and – you won’t believe it – as beneficial on the face as under the faucet it seems. Emma Stone has recently gushed about her cheapo skincare trick of mixing baking soda with water to use as a gentle face scrub, and Liv Tyler bathes in a steamy bath of the stuff to ‘sweat out all the toxins’ from her skin – a trick she learn from her pediatrician for when her kids got sick.

But there are many more beauty uses for this sodium bicarbonate, and they date far further back to my dalliance with a sponge and the stuff this morning…

Those crazy ancient Egyptians – who, let’s face it, started every beauty revolution – used a natural deposit of sodium carbonate as a cleansing agent similar to soap.
A great lip tip is to dip your toothbrush into a small bowl filled with baking soda and sugar and run it gently across your lips to exfoliate. Follow up with a hydrating lip balm.
Lores Giglio, Global Director for MUK Skincare, bases her at-home hair solution around baking soda. She mixes a teaspoon of the stuff with a handful of shampoo to create a paste. When lathered into the hair and left for ten minutes before rinsing, the concoction works to lift any ‘green’ out of the hair that can afflict coloured-meets-chlorine-happy hair. After this cleanse, you will find that your next visit renders hair far more receptive to colour.
Nix the itch after your shower or bath by rubbing it into the dry, rough, scratchy areas of your skin (elbows, heels and the like) while the skin is still damp.
Think BS keeps your sinks clean? Wait till you see what it can do for your strawberries and spinach. Natalie Bloom once told me that before her family bites into their fruit or veg, they clean them with their home-made, non-toxic household cleaner; a combination of vinegar, baking soda and essential oils. No excuse not to up your intake of you glow-inducing leafy greens now, Primpettes!
Toothpaste? Pah! Try baking soda to brush your teeth by adding it to a natural kids toothpaste brand so that there is a pleasant subtle taste.
Remove the residue – and last month’s hairballs – from your brush by soaking them in one teaspoon of baking soda in a warm basin of water. Rinse, and flat dry.

Although I strongly advise buying baking soda and beginning your beauty routine from scratch – McKenzie’s is my choice – some clever companies have done the hard work for you: