In the spirit of finding non-conventional uses for baking soda, I found this skin care tip from Amy Fontinelle, the writer of Two Pennies Earned. Apparently you can create an inexpensive concoction of baking soda and Cetaphil to exfoliate your face that won't irritate dry, flaky skin during these cold months. Read on for Amy's advice.

Exfoliating your face occasionally will help prevent breakouts and remove the unsightly flaking that can plague skin during dry winter weather. Instead of paying extra money for a facial exfoliant that is probably too harsh for the delicate skin on your face (despite what the manufacturer would have you believe), just add a little bit of baking soda to some Cetaphil (an excellent mild face wash that I use twice a day), mix with your fingertips, massage in circles all over your face, and rinse. For a gentler exfoliant, simply use more Cetaphil and less baking soda in your mixture. If you already use Cetaphil (you should!) and you already have baking soda in your home, using this recipe is like getting a beauty product for free and will save you $3 - $30, depending on how much you typically spend on facial cleansers. And if you don't normally buy exfoliating products, now you have a new skin solution you can try risk-free.

(If you don't already use Cetaphil, you can get a large 16 ounce bottle for about $9 at Target. You can decrease the cost by buying a smaller bottle (although that will cost you more per ounce) or buying a store brand, which in my experience is just as good.)

After taking Jolie in NYC's advice, I recently starting using Cetaphil myself during my nightly skincare routine and love how moisturizing it is, especially given that I'm one of the unlucky ones prone to start looking like a scaly amphibian around this time of year if I'm not using a decent product. I'm eager to see how this works, so I can potentially toss the harsh product I'm currently using and get multi-uses out of my cleanser and the box of baking soda currently sitting on my pantry shelf. Is there anything aside from triple bypass surgery that baking soda can't do?

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