Soap & Skin (Shrinking Products & Sunscreens) & Living Wills...

The soap is shrinking but guess what? The price is the same. All the best for profits for Dial, the oldest American deoderant soap now owned by a German company. Look how it is  shaved out on the top and bottom.Have you noticed this? Companies are cutting back. Soup in restaurants is more watery, portions are smaller, and you find less product in the same packages. Well, my soap is no longer the same bar, shape-wise. 

So when you try to cut back in these economic times, you pay the same for less product while food and gas prices soar. The average family is spending $4,655 more on items like gas, food, housing and health insurance.

Sun on the skin: With the debate about sunscreens, health and vitamin D), here's what I'm doing for my family (50% of our population is deficient). I tell them to get 15 min. of sun three times a week at non-peak intense sunray times without sunscreen so the body can best produce Vitamin D (which I define as 9:30 - 4:00 here in the high desert of Santa Fe and when we lived in Houston, 10 - 3).  But still, we have to, at our high altitude, be sure we're wearing the right sunscreens in peak hours. 

Buy the right sunscreen: I put together the links below for the products I'll be buying after going through the recent investigation of nearly 1,000 brand-name sunscreen products (4 out of 5 contain chemicals that may pose health hazards or don't adequately protect skin from the sun's damaging rays.  Some of the worst offenders are leading brands Coppertone, Banana Boat and Neutrogena).  For ease of ordering - click the links to buy them directly from Amazon:

• Neutrogena Sensitive Skin Sunblock Lotion, SPF 30 
• Olay Complete Defense Daily UV Moisturizer, Sensitive Skin, SPF 30 
• Olay Complete Defense Daily UV Moisturizer, SPF 30
• Walgreens Sunblock with Zinc Oxide for Face, Nose & Ears, SPF 45+ 
• Solar Sense Clear Zink, For Face, SPF 45   

Living Wills: After a story involving a relative, I printed out an Advance Health Care Directive (link here for a copy) and we're having all of our children sign this and we're telling them where they are kept.  My mother said for her father, my grandfather, who died nine years ago, she taped it near his door so all medical people would see it.  She and her friends keep copies in their glove compartments in case of car wrecks.

Don't burn, don't brush death without a living will, buy and budget wisely and get that Vitamin D to be healthy.  So says this mom!

Comments

[Jennifer]

Good advice, all the way around.

My grocery bills are really starting to give me heartburn. Used to be, my love of cooking meant better food for less. Nowadays, it almost makes more sense to eat out more often.

[allison]

I love that 15 minutes of sunshine. It not only restores my vitamin D, it also restores my soul!

[Janet]

See I'm convinced that the reason I've been so sick this year has been lack of sunshine. We go outside, but we're so shady that I don't even bother with sunscreen for the kids.

My stepsisters' mother just died pretty much penniless and my stepfather had to foot the bill for the funeral. I'm in the process of writing down all our information so people don't have to pay for something when we have insurance that covers it.