Looking for ways to save money without sacrificing your favorite beauty routines? Start in your bathroom! There are plenty of beauty products that you really don’t need to buy. Why? Because making them is super simple.

Look, you know me, right? Well, some of you do (new people, poke around a bit and get to know me!) You know that I love my beauty products. Shampoo, conditioner, lotions, makeup, makeup remover- my bathroom is stocked full of it all. I’ll never stop being a customer for beauty brands. Still, some things are so easy to DIY that it doesn’t really make sense to spend my money on them. Other things are nice to buy, but can still easily be DIY’ed in when times are tight. Check out these beauty products to DIY instead of buy!

6 Beauty products that I almost always DIY

These are the things I almost always make myself. Most of these things can be made in minutes. The hardest part about any of these recipes you see on Pinterest is finding a Pinterest-worthy container and photographing it. Seriously, I’m not kidding. For your own home use, you can just use a cheap mason jar.

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1. Bath Salts

I never buy bath salts anymore because it takes literally under 3 minutes to whip up my own. In fact, my son will tell me seconds before a bath that he wants salts. I grab the Epsom salts and my essential oils, and voila, custom salts in seconds. As long as you keep those two things on hand, you’ll never run out of soothing bath salts.

You can even get fancy by mixing in things like Dead Sea salts or powdered milk (try it sometime, it makes the water oh-so ah-mazing). Need a few recipes?

Bath Salt Recipes to Try

• My all-time favorite is my cold care bath soak.
• Another great one to try: my lemon lavender bath salts.
• These Unicorn Fizzy Bath Salts are perfect for kids (and unicorn-loving adults, too)!

2. Scrubs of any kind 

Whether it’s a lip scrub, face scrub or body scrub, you can make it at home with ingredients found in your grocery store. A simple Pinterest search will render you thousands upon thousands of DIY scrub recipes. The main ingredients are usually coconut oil and some type of sugar. I prefer course sugar like Morena Cane Sugar, but you can use brown, raw or even plain old table sugar.

Scrub Recipes to Make

• Lip Sugar Scrub Recipe
• 5 Scrubs for Your Face
• Lavender Vanilla Sugar Scrub

3. Massage oil, cuticle oil, etc

Massage oils, cuticle oils and pretty much any other type of oil is typically made from two things: a high-quality carrier and essential oils. You can buy a great sweet almond oil to use as a base, then add a few drops of your favorite EO depending on the type of oil you’re making.

For example, if you want something super romantic for date night, add some sandalwood and patchouli (or, if you really want to go for broke, rose oil, but we’re trying to save money here!). Need a muscle rub? Go for something like peppermint and basil. Voila. It’s done.

Need a visual tutorial? Check out this video:

4. Face toner

Two words: witch hazel. End of story. Okay, so some people have skin types that don’t do well with witch hazel. For those, you can make toner out of just about anything else in your kitchen: green tea, black tea, herb-infused water, fruit infused water. Coconut water, vinegar and water. Need I go on? There’s no reason to spend $5+ on skin toner when you have the ingredients for like 400 different types sitting right in your kitchen.

Try these easy recipes:

5. Masks

Remember those little facial masks that come in the little packets? They live at the end of the health and beauty aisles in mass retailers. They’re cute and all (I used them all the time as a teenager), but you can just as easily mash some mango on your face and call it a day. Like toners, the ingredients for a great mask are sitting in your kitchen.

I love this video tutorial with four different mask ideas!

6. Essential oil blends

Whether you’re looking for a great EO blend to mix into a carrier oil for that massage oil or the perfect mixture to add to your aromatherapy diffuser, you can easily make this at home yourself.   If you stopped by yesterday, you’ll notice I shared 7 of my favorite blends that you can make with EOs that cost less than $10 a bottle.

Keep in mind that one ounce of EO will go a very, very long way since you’re typically using a drop or two at a time. I just can’t see the point in spending upwards of $30 on a tiny bottle of a “proprietary” blend of something when I can usually figure out how to put it together myself from my stock of essential oils.

7. Lip Balm

Lip balm is super easy to make at home. You just need the right butters, oils and waxes. I don’t like using essential oils in lip balms because if you go overboard, it can be really dangerous to ingest them. This is where flavor oils and extracts come in handy. A teeny tiny drop of vanilla and orange extract mixed into the right combination of cocoa butter (the whole chunk stuff, not the lotiony stuff) and  beeswax makes for a tasty lip balm!

8. Body butter

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t buy these quite often. Bath & Body Works, the Body Shop and a few other brands make scents I love that I can’t figure out how to duplicate. I’ve also made my own in a pinch, on those days when I need the deep moisturizing that I can only get from a butter. For a good body butter, you pretty much just need a solid oil (coconut oil works great) mixed with a liquid oil (I used walnut oil in mine for something different), cocoa butter and essential oils (optional, really).

9. Hair care products

I never tried making my own shampoo or conditioner before. My mom has, but I’m just not that crafty. I think shampoos are harder, but you can make a great leave-in conditioner at home though. Just search Pinterest for DIY leave in conditioner. FYI, some of them say to use water in the recipe. If you use water in ANY natural beauty recipe, you MUST refrigerate it and use it within a week.

The only exception is if you’re adding a preservative of some type. I’m not a fan of using water in recipes because it turns your harmless DIY beauty product into a germ factory.

FYI, you can get a lot of the ingredients you need for all your DIY bath & beauty products by subscribing to Simply Earth! You get a big starter box with all of the basics, plus a monthly box with extra supplies for about 6 projects. 

I’m sure there are other bath and beauty products that you can DIY instead of buy, but these are by far the easiest, in my opinion. Soaps are another one, but they’re more involved. I’m talking real soap, not melt and pour. No offense to those, but they’re not truly homemade soap and not as gentle as real homemade soap. I’m also planning to try my hand at making my own mineral makeup. I haven’t gotten around to buying all the stuff yet though. If anyone has tips there, feel free to share them!

So tell me, what bath & beauty products do YOU DIY instead of buy?