Beauty on a Budget 

Trader Joe’s Baker’s Dozen Best Buys for Beauty:*

Trader Joe’s is a California-based company of alternative/organic/health supermarket stores that can be found around the United States. We first heard about Joe’s some years ago, when a neighbor introduced us to a delicious breakfast cereal that they sell. Then a couple of years later a good friend radically turned us on to the really fun stuff – Trader Joe’s cosmetics/beauty/bath aisle! Since the editorial staff frequents the store regularly, we decided not to keep our favorite things to ourselves any longer. So, we’ve compiled our Baker’s Dozen Favorite Trader Joe’s beauty items for your pleasure.

 

Avalon Organic Botanicals – Therapeutic Lavender products:

It’s a lavender love-in!!! For the price you can’t do better. Avalon offers excellent quality, and uses pure lavender essence extracted from flowers grown in northern California. This is a company that puts out a variety of outstanding products at reasonable prices. The Lavender Therapeutics line contains organic lavender; calendula, which is an orange/yellow flower, related to the marigold family, that is great for skin and hair – ancient people, and modern ones too, steep the flowers for bathing and skin care; chamomile which has soothing and healing properties, and the lavender line of products are also enriched with lots of vitamins for extra goodness.

1. The Therapeutic Lavender Bath and Shower Gel is a must. Rich lather, great scent and it leaves no residue or film. Great for all skin types including very sensitive skin.

2. The Therapeutic Lavender Nourishing Shampoo is perfect for all hair types. Leaves fine, limp hair with a lot of body – you’ll feel like a bohemian millennial Breck girl.

3. The Therapeutic Lavender conditioner is excellent, rich and creamy. We did find that it works best for non-color treated, less dry hair – for color treated hair our staff found that an additional intensive conditioner was needed. But for all you “normies” out there this conditioner is perfect.

4. To round off the lavender line, we also love the dark green, apple shaped pump bottle of Lavender Glycerin liquid soap for washing hands. In our household (and other staff members) there is one pump bottle by every sink.

 

Tea Tree Oil Products – Desert Essence and Trader Joe’s:

Say tea tree oil three times fast!  We have all heard about and know the origins of this superb and amazing all purpose natural antiseptic oil from Australia. Here are three products that Joe’s sells that are A-1.

5. Desert Essence Thoroughly Clean Face Wash with Organic Tea Tree Oil and Awapuhi (Hawaiian white ginger). This face wash is incredible; it has a clean healthy scent that’s just divine. It’s perfect for all skin types and we find it really works well for problem skin or skin that has occasional breakouts. Read the back label, this product contains an interesting mix of ingredients. We find that in the winter it’s an excellent liquid hand soap for all the germy hand exchanges one is forced to have, and it’s great for avoiding colds – the minute we walk into the house after being out the first thing we’ve all gotten into the habit of doing is washing our hands with this liquid soap.

6. The Tea Tree Oil Facial Cleansing Pads are great, especially in the summer heat and grime. We find in the winter they can be a little drying, but in the hot, humid, warm weather they’re fantastic to swipe over your face and neck after you wash – you’d be surprised to see what is still left over on your poor pores. Again its fresh clean medicinal qualities are all skin friendly and healing.

7.The pure and original product: 100% Australian Tea Tree Oil – a truly great discovery. The pure oil is so versatile; use it for pimples, bites, add it to your bath. As a general antiseptic like peroxide and rubbing alcohol, you should have a bottle of tea tree oil in your medicine cabinet.

8. Desert Essence Blemish Touch Stick. This is the all time finds of finds for those of us who get pimples. The magic roller ball is so effective you can practically delete your dermatologist’s number from your phone. It has saved more than one of us on the staff a trip to the doctor.

9. Trader Joe’s own Tea Tree Oil bar soap. The Tea Tree Pure vegetable soap comes in a pack of two and lasts a good long time. It has a mild, fresh, clean fragrance that won’t conflict with any perfume you may apply. This soap is perfect for all skin types.

Trader Joe’s Savons (that’s soap) and other bath products: 

Trader Joe’s makes several milled in France soaps called “J’adore ce savon.” There’s orange blossom, lemon verbena, etc.

10. Our favorite, quelle surprise, is the Lavender South of France bar soap. For the price it goes a long way, and it rivals the fine creamy quality of much higher priced boutique soaps from places like L’Occitane – not that we don’t just love their products, but a lot of us are on beauty budgets. This scrumptious bar of pale blue soap contains Shea butter, so it’s kind to dry skin. Always have it stocked along with Trader Joe’s Tea Tree Oil bar soap so you can alternate them.

11. Celtic Lavender Scrub exfoliator – We love this product. It’s got an ancient Druid princess bath ceremony quality to it. Packed with Celtic Sea Salt, lavender oil and marine goodies from northern waters, this scrub is a great pick-me-up, especially in the dry winter weather. It leaves a nice light, delicate, sheath of lavender moisture on your body. This excellent scrub comes in big tub that will last you a long time. Several of us on the staff also use the Celtic Scrub in our bath. When we don’t have time to do a long pure salt bath, we take a nice palm size scoop of the scrub with a little bit of the Lavender Bath and Shower Gel, run the bathwater, and voila a rejuvenating experience!

12. Grapefruit Chamomile Shower Gel Scrub is from Trader Joe’s Zen product line. The grapefruit smells so good you may want to eat it, but don’t. It’s a gel AND an excellent exfoliator – it seems summery in fragrance and feeling, but that’s just our imagination, use it all year round. It’s a perfect exfoliator to use before applying a self tanning cream or spray. The scrub is lovely and gentle, not sandpapery like some exfoliating products, and it does the trick. Again, a large amount (and you don’t need much each time you use it) at a good price is a deal.

13. Trader Joe’s Lavender Dryer Bags are, obviously, not directly beauty related, but a great household product. Let’s say they make you feel beautiful, so there’s the beauty connection! They’re kind of like dryer sheets but infinitely better (we don’t like the artificial smell and chemical/oily feel of supermarket dryer sheets). Trader Joe’s bags come in a box of 4. These bags are porous paper pouches filled with lavender buds and flowers. You just stick one in your dryer with your wet laundry, set your dryer cycle as you always do, and your dry clothes come out subtly and gently smelling of lavender. It’s so soothing and calming and good for your well-being. The bags are especially perfect for drying your sheets and towels – the scent of lavender will refresh your bath towels, and the scent of lavender on your bedding will lull you to a restful sleep at night. Now here’s a great tip right on the box: once the scent seems used up and it’s time to replace your dryer bag (the box says they’re good for about 5-10 dryer cycles – depending on your machine, size of laundry loads, etc.), take the old bag, open it up and scatter the buds and flowers on your carpet and vacuum the lot up. The lavender will scent your carpet and your room, and the vacuum cleaner won’t have that mysterious wet old doggy smell (even if you don’t have a dog). Everything is lavender-fresh smelling. It’s de-lovely.

Afterword:

All our baker’s dozen products are cruelty free: no animal by-products are used, nor were any sweet bunnies or other wonderful creatures that we share the world with harmed in making these products. So that’s a good thing!

These are our current Trader Joe’s recommendations – we’ll continue to scour the shelves of this fun store for future great products at great value. Check out Trader Joe’s cosmetics shelves yourself and see what else catches your eye. Depending on where you are in the States (see Trader Joe’s website for the store nearest you), that department can be more or less extensive. We have three stores nearby, and they do vary in what they carry. A friend in the San Francisco Bay area has a significantly larger Joe’s than the three here, but you’ll find what you need in any one of them. It’s a cool company and concept; the store is clean and organized, the staff is young, friendly and knowledgeable, and you can’t beat the prices. Don’t miss their ultra dark Swiss chocolate bars that are top notch – who needs Godiva?  These bars are fantastic and Joe’s cleverly and irresistibly places them right near the checkout counter. You have to get at least one bar. Chocolate is a mood enhancer, so there’s some natural Prozac for you.

Enjoy shopping for all sorts of great herbal, natural, and aroma-therapeutic soul enhancing beauty products. Bring a friend along for the romp. Remember it’s good karma to help other people enhance their life journey, and beauty and bathing are all part of it!

Back on planet Earth:

Okay that’s the end of it. I’m exhausted from reading this over-energized piece of writing. I hope that it was useful. I learned something. It took me longer to photo edit this piece than it does to write a fresh post!

*Note: since writing this article, the names of some of the products may have changed slightly, as well whether TJ’s still carries them. I checked and Whole Foods carries some, and all the companies mentioned have websites where you can peruse and purchase.

Clare Irwin