Heaven in a Bath

Day 17: Spa Body Bath Soak

Just thinking about today's product makes me smile. Literally. Every time I told myself "if I finish my chores I can write a blog post" I smiled. It's a good thing that nobody else is home today, I don't need any witnesses! Really, I'm not exciting about the writing of the blog - more about the using of the product. 

Bath soak & I first met where you would expect us to: in the bath. And believe me, there's nothing this mint addict loves more than a bath, except maybe a peppermint bath. Enter bath soak. *sigh* I read on some of Gary's old blogs that the bath soak used to be less minty, but after clients and consultants complained that it wasn't enough, BC re-formulated it to increase the peppermint. Bless each and every one of your complaining hearts! 

Not only does this smell like peppermint, it's actually useful too. The spa body line (as it's called in Canada) has a little secret: it's also what our American friends call the "detox" line. What does that mean for you? It's magic: TA-DA! It's going to help take the toxins out of your skin, and the oils will help infuse moisture in their place. Win-win! In the same way that the Clay Masque sucks all the gross stuff out of pimples, this will do the same for the gross stuff everywhere else. 

As a hurts-herself-by-existing kind of person, I've noticed that this also means any cuts, scrapes, and bruises heal faster. And the muscles! The muscle pain is definitely made better by using this too. Take it from the girl with a bruise on the back of her hand because she hit it on a piano when walking past, because she didn't give the piano enough clearance - I KNOW! (And yes, it really did happen & I really am bruised. No, I don't want to talk about it. All you need to know is bath soak makes it better).

After a few months, bath soak & I became better acquainted when, one fall day, my head was very itchy. Having a former PTA/lice-check mom, I knew I could ask her to check, and I did, but I already knew what the answer would be: I was lice-free, but I had a ton of mosquito & blackfly bites on my scalp that I had scratched A LOT in my sleep. Making them extra yucky. Probably from playing soccer in a very rural/wooded area, twice a week, every week since May. Add to that  allergy season and drier weather since it was getting colder out, and I was the definition of a walking disaster. More so than usual. 

I remember on my drive back to my home wishing that I could just soak my head in a tub of bath soak to take away the itchiness. And then I thought, why can't I? Already a fan of oil soaks to help my hair after a dye-disaster of my teenage years was still haunting me, I knew that it couldn't hurt. So I did it! How? 

I took a bottle of bath soak & made sure to wear clothes I didn't like in case the oil ruined them (note: the oil washed out, but it was 100% cotton - I wouldn't take a chance on other clothes so I still use the same shirt when I do it). Pour a bit of the soak in your hands, rub them together, massage into scalp. Repeat until desired amount of bath soak has been massaged onto scalp/into hair (depends what you're treating). Wrap with hair-sized towel (use a clip to hold in place if you need to), and relax for 15-30 minutes. Or if you're me, watch an entire episode of Heartland (gosh it's SO good!!! And from CBC. Who knew?!?!). Then go shower. Wash your hair as normal, and carry on with your day. 

Note: this took the itching away, but I had to re-do it about a week later, since I wasn't going to give up outdoor soccer with just 2 weeks left of the season, and try as I might my body refused to give up my allergies. It also meant I couldn't see my mom the day that I used it or the next day, though, since I smelled so (minty) awesome! It's not her fault she's allergic to the most delicious herb of all-time, after all, but still no need to send her to the hospital with a used-up Epi pen & the excuse "my daughter did it."

After my scalp healed (aka after I stopped making myself into a blood-sucking buffet/colder fall temperatures arrived), I missed my weekly rendezvous with bath soak. After all, we had become good friends and we had been through a lot together. I also noticed that fall allergies outlast mosquito season. Yikes. Now that I had beautiful hair (the bath soak actually helped to restore it to its pre-dyed glory!) and my scalp was healed, I didn't need to soak my entire head in it, and it was too much to take a bath every time my allergies bothered me (bath soak or no, my skin can't handle one daily!). 

My solution was to take a bowl, fill it with hot water & bath soak, and add as many facecloths that it could hold. I let them soak until the water was cold, wrung them out, rolled them up, and stored them in a ziploc freezer bag in the fridge. Whenever my allergies got really bad I would pull one out, microwave it for a bit, and then lay back to cover my face with the cloth while bath soak worked its magic. And I could breathe again!

Our most recent escapade was to make my entire house smell delicious! (Read: your entire house will smell like bath soak. And for a while. Think long and hard if you really want this. I, or course, was all over it!). I was given an oil burner-thingy (descriptive, I know! Think Scentsy, but with a candle instead of a lightbulb) many years ago, but ran out of essential oils to put in it & didn't bother to get more. (I was always so bad at leaving it unattended for hours, the oil would evaporate/burn down to nothing, and I was scared I would forget one day and actually burn the house down). So this time, I put bath soak in there, with the intention to come back & blow out the candle later to avoid the burn-to-nothing fire hazard.

As it turns out, the bath soak doesn't evaporate! I used the same bath soak, but went through 4 tea lights, and still the amount of bath soak was the same! (Maybe a teensy bit less, but not enough for me to really notice). In fact, that same bath soak was used for a month straight before I wanted to wash out the oil burner so I dumped the bath soak. Realistically, I'm sure it could go much longer.

Thanks for listening to my adventures with bath soak, I would love to hear how you use it too - make sure to leave your comments below!