Happy Friday friends! Another week in the books and I am ready for the weekend! We are supposed to get more snow here and I don’t know about you but when it gets cold outside I like to warmup inside with a good, cozy bath! This led to today’s post because I wanted to share with you my recently discovered clean bath time routine, that not only smells great (if you make it like I do), but is super beneficial to your body too! Anyone guess what it is yet?? I’m talking a good ole fashioned Epsom salt bath, but with a little boujee added to it, for some Jill Comes Clean approved flair.
If you’ve never done an Epsom salt bath before let me just tell you 3 awesome things about them: They are cheap, they’re an easy way to create your own home spa experience, and they’re good for your health! (Bonus: they smell amazing too if you make them like I do).
Just to get a little Nursey on you here for a minute….Epsom salts are made up of Magnesium and Sulfur (aka Magnesium Sulfate), which most of us tend to be lacking in our bodies. So when you soak in an Epsom salt bath these nutrients are absorbed through your skin, and help nourish your insides. Our bodies use magnesium for several things but some big ways are for detoxification and to protect us from chemicals in our environment, as a lack of magnesium is a breeding ground for free radicals (damage cells and DNA and are cancer causing). And sulfur is a key component of our metabolism and decreases inflammation.
So in a nut shell, Epsom salt baths are a cheap and easy way to detoxify your body, decrease inflammation, and give your body essential nutrients it needs to function. Bonus: It speeds healing on injuries, and even sore muscles after a workout.
How I Make Mine and Some Important Info.
Now, you can certainly just pour a cup of Epsom salts into a bath and call it a day, but what fun is that? Instead, I like to add essential oils to mine (usually lavender, something citrus, or stress away) so that they smell great, and I get the added benefit of the oil. Better yet here is a recent trick I learned for those of you that use oils…..
When you finish a bottle of oil don’t throw it out! Instead, save them, then take the caps off and place them upside down in a container of the salts (you can really bury them in there more that I have pictured here) and let them soak there for a few days. Now, you can just use one scent, or if you have several empty bottles of various oils sitting around, throw them all in there and just have a mixed scent. The salt will draw out any remaining oil from the container and voila! You now have naturally scented bath salts.
When you go to take a bath with Epsom salt you simply fill the tub with warm water (duh) and toss in a scoop or a cup of the salts. Then soak for 15-30 minutes. Now, here is where a few rules come into play…..when you are finished with the bath, all you do is get out and dry off. DO NOT RINSE, and DO NOT wash with soap. Doing this will rinse off the salt and the magnesium sulfate won’t get absorbed into your body. And that’s it! You can take the baths as often as you’d like. Most people do 1-2 times a week.
So there you have it friends! A simple, inexpensive, good for you, home spa type treatment you can do for yourself to help unwind while also doing something good for your health. Have a great weekend. I’ll see you back here Monday!
Jill
