Toiletries & Saving My $$

When it comes to personal care I can easily claim myself to be a minimalist.  I honestly don't keep a lot of toiletries and my daily routine is pretty minimal.  So is my budget.  I try to keep nonfood expenses to about $25 a month.  This typically includes supplies and food for our cats too.  Even still I find this is more than enough to cover our needs.

I buy toilet paper and tissues when they are on sale and if possible I use a coupon to shave even more off of the final price.  We purchase our feminine hygiene products at Walmart and we find their store brand is quite adequate to meet our needs.

I purchase national brand bar soap, facial cleanser, shampoo and conditioner, deodorant, toothbrushes, toothpaste, floss, lip balm and cotton balls at the dollar store.  Hair brushes, combs, hair bands and bobby pins too.  They often have name brand makeup as well which I will purchase for my girls as gifts, but as a rule none of us wears makeup on a daily basis.  We just prefer not to.

I pick up body cream, which I use as my face cream, lotion and shower gel at Bath & Body Works and I usually get it either for free (coupons and gift cards) or extremely cheap on sale.  It lasts a good long time and the shower gel pulls double duty when I mix a tablespoon of it with some warm water to make foaming handsoap refill solution for our soap dispensers.

We often give and receive toiletries as gifts.  The girls will give me a year supply of chapstick for my birthday and Santa always gets them toothbrushes and toothpaste in their stockings.  The Easter bunny brings it too.  Lotion and shower gel from Bath & Body Works are almost always a part of birthday and Christmas gifts.

The biggest way we save money is to not overuse products and that makes things last a very long time.  We also don't waste anything.  It only takes a nickel size dollop of shampoo and conditioner to get our hair plenty clean and we don't "repeat" despite what the bottle says.  A pea sized amount of toothpaste is more than enough to brush your teeth with.  And you don't need a giant wad of TP for your bum when a few squares gets the job done quite nicely without clogging up the plumbing.

I find I don't buy toiletries all that often and when I do I make sure that I find what we need at the best possible price.  And if something seems to be running low we aren't above standing it upside down, adding a little water and giving it a good shake or cutting it open to scrape out the last little bit before declaring something gone or empty.

Spending less $$ on toiletries means I get to save more of it for other things!