Exfoliating Homemade Body Scrubs with Simple Sugar & Salt Recipes for the Home Kitchen

Body scrubs have always been a beauty must. Cleopatra's slaves rubbed her down with granulated honey and myrrh, an upscale version of the scrubs of pumice, barley hulls and goat's milk used by lesser Egyptians of the day. Body scrubs have proliferated lately, with recipes including grains, nut shells, sea shells, salts and other minerals scrape-scrape-scraping away the layers and leaving fresh, new skin behind.

It's Easy to Make Body Scrubs at Home

You may have noticed that you're paying a lot of dough for a handful of scrub. Read the ingredients: you're paying for sexy packaging! Most scrubs contain salt, sugar or nut shells and you can buy any of those things for well under fifty cents a pound. But the seven ounce coconut scrub from The Body Shop sells for $17. How long does it take to use up less than one cup of body scrub? Not long!

Universal Body Scrub Recipe To Follow

2 Parts Salt or Sugar + 1 Part Beauty Oil + Essential Oil
= Basic Body Scrub

You Choose the Natural Exfoliate Ingredients

Make your own body polish! Choose your favorite fragrances, control the granularity of the scrub, avoid ingredients that you may be allergic to, and create a big potful of body polish with about $10 worth of ingredients. Or you can make a cupful for under a dollar and decide if you like the recipe. It's a breeze: you'll need a spoon, a bowl, and a container for storage.

Step 1: Choose Your Salt or Sugar Exfoliate (amount = 2 parts)

Review the table below to see the types of sugar or salts that are readily available at any grocery or health food store.

Salts (listed finer to courser)
• Fine Salt
  
• Table Salt
  
• Sea Salt
  
• Kosher Salt
  
• Epsom Salt
  

Sugars (listed finer to courser)
• Fine Sugar
  
• Brown Sugar
  
• White Sugar
  
• Turbinado (raw sugar)
  

Step 2: Choose a Beauty Oil (amount = 1 part)

The beauty oil will turn the salt or sugar into a moisturizing slurry that can be rubbed into wet or dry skin. Review the table of beauty oils below to see their skin benefits. You can always use more than one oil. These can be found at most grocery or drugstores with a natural food department.

Suggested Beauty Oils for Body Scrubs
• Apricot oil - great for sensitive skin
• Avocado oil - great for dry skin
• Coconut oil - great for moisturizing
• Grape seed oil - great for oily skin, acne prone skin
• Jojoba oil - great for moisturizing for all skin types
• Olive oil - great for moisturizing (but strong smell)
• Sesame oil - great for its anti-oxidant properties
• Almond oil - great for moisturizing for all skin types
• Vitamin E oil - great for healing & moisturizing

Step 3: Choose Your Fragrance & Special Additives (several drops)

The sky is the limit when it comes to adding fragrance to your homemade body scrub. You can use any blend of essential oils that can be found at many natural food stores. You can also use fragrance sources from your own kitchen like vanilla extract or citrus fruits. This is a place to experiment and make it your own!

You may also want to add additional ingredients to your scrubs like aloe vera for its skin soothing properties, tea tree oil for its anti-inflammatory properties or honey to improve the texture or your scrub. If need more ideas on additives you can incorporate view the ingredient labels of premade natural body scrubs at your local beauty store or natural foods market.

Storing Your Body Scrub

Scrubs stored in the refrigerator should last up to 4 weeks. Just keep a couple days worth in the shower for regular use. If your scrub starts to smell, look or feel "funny" throw it out and start a new batch.

Raw sugar (Turbinado) isn't as harsh as other natural exfoliates.

Using Sugar as the Exfoliating Ingredient

Try it sweet. Sugar isn't as harsh as ground nut shells: it melts fast when it hits moisture, so if your skin is delicate, you're probably not going to over-scrub it. The other benefit is the fact that sugar, unlike pumice, ground shells and other insoluble ingredients, will melt instead of sticking in your bathtub drains. Here's what you need to make a large batch:

Homemade Sugar Body Scrub Recipe

• 1 Cups turbinado (raw sugar) or light brown sugar

• ¼ Cups avocado, untoasted sesame oil or jojoba oil

• ¼ Cup apricot or peach kernel oil

• essential oil (we used ginger and vanilla)

• honey for smoothing the texture