15 ways I use coconut oil instead of conventional beauty products.

I used to spend loads of pennies on beauty products, but over the years I've replaced them all with coconut oil.

Conventional beauty products contain loads of chemicals and some of them are harmful, and they're generally packaged in plastic which I try to avoid. 

This huge jar of coconut oil cost £15 and has lasted me well over a year so far.  If I used conventional beauty products I'd be spending over £50 (calculated using prices for basic vegan friendly products on Superdrug's website).  Here's how I use it...

Face

Lip balm

Under eye cream

Serum - if it's a really cold day, or my skin is a bit dry, I pop some coconut oil on my cheeks before I put my moisturiser on.

Day cream - if I'm not going out I'll use coconut oil as a face moisturiser, but if I'm going outside I use a cream with SPF instead.

Night cream

Face exfoliator - make a really nice exfoliating and moisturising face mask by mixing coconut oil, oats and sugar - rub in into your face and leave it on for a few minutes before washing it off.

Body

Body lotion

Hand lotion

Cuticle balm

Foot lotion

After sun

Body scrub - mix a little bit of coconut oil with granulated sugar for a nice gentle exfoliator. 

Hair

Leave in conditioner - I melt a teeny bit in between my palms and then run it through wet or dry hair.

Frizz ease - I used to use sooo much Frizz Ease, coconut oil doesn't give quite the same effect but it does help keep frizzy hair at bay. 

Hair protector for swimming

Is there anything else I can use coconut oil for?!?

* Facebook * Instagram * Twitter * Bloglovin' *

Make one small change - use vegan dental floss.

Making one small change at a time can make becoming eco friendly loads easier.  Lots of small changes add up to a big difference.

Buying this vegan dental floss is the result of wanting to find eco friendly floss, but not quite being able to find any.  All the biodegradable options are made from silk, which isn't vegan (they kill the silk worms when they remove their silky cocoons).  

So this is a better choice than standard dental floss, but it's still not the best choice.  It comes in a plastic box, with a metal cutter and the floss is synthetic.  But it's made with a lot less chemicals than the floss I used to use.  There's no petrochemical coatings, or teflon, or dodgy antibacterials, parabens or other nasty chemicals, which are bad for your body and the planet.  This vegan dental floss just has natural mint and tea tree, xylitol and vegan wax.  The outer packaging is a recyclable card box, but as I bought the floss online it came in a padded envelope and had to be transported. 

I'll keep looking out for a better option, but sometimes it's just a case of waiting for the market to catch up with what you're looking to buy.  I'm unwilling to give up flossing, after 10+ years of orthodontial treatment I'm really into looking after my teeth!  This is an imperfect small eco friendly change, but it's a small step in the right direction at least.

Don't forget to check out my other small changes to help you live a greener life!

* Facebook * Instagram * Twitter * Bloglovin' *

No 'poo, homemade sea salt and lemon hair and head scrub.

So it's been about 3 years since I stopped washing my hair and went no 'poo (no 'poo is short for no shampoo!).  I don't really miss anything from my shampooing days, except for a salty, scrubby shampoo from Lush that made my hair soft and amazing.  

Lush's Big Shampoo contains sodium laureth sulphate which makes it unsuitable for no 'poo haircare routines.  SLS is a know skin irritant, pollutant and can permeate your body and stay in there (urgh!) so I avoid it.  Lush's shampoo also starts a nearly £7 for a little pot - my DIY version is cheap, vegan and natural.  And it smells amazing! 

You will need

Coarse sea salt

Lemon juice

Essential oils (optional) 

How to make no 'poo hair and head scrub

It's super simple, just mix the sea salt and lemon juice together.  I don't really measure it, but I'd say start with roughly a tablespoon of each then add more juice or salt as needed until the salt is soaked through but not dissolved.  If you want to add some essential oils add a couple of drops now and mix them in.  Essential oils are optional, but both lavender oil and tea tree oil have anti-bacterial and anti-fungal properties, so if you're head is a bit itchy it could be a good idea to add them.  You can also add lime juice, or swap the lemon juice for lime if you prefer a limey smell.   

Should I add a disclaimer here to say if you have any cuts or owchie bits on your scalp perhaps give this a miss, lemon and salt will be too stingy! 

How to use your salt and lemon hair and head scrub

Make the scrub in advance then jump in the shower and wet your hair.  Scoop up a handful of hair scrub and gently massage it into your scalp.  Repeat until your whole scalp is covered and smooth the rest through the lengths of your hair.  Leave the scrub in for a few minutes then rinse out thoroughly. 

I use it about once a month or so.  It will give you a happy scalp and the soft, floofy hair of your dreams.

Do you have any no 'poo hair tips?

Check out my other 'no poo posts too, 

Wash your hair with aloe vera

1 year of no 'poo 

And more no 'poo here 

* Facebook * Instagram * Twitter * Bloglovin' *

No 'Poo, My New Shampoo. Washing your Hair with Aloe Vera.

Let me introduce you to my new shampoo.

Yup, it's an aloe vera plant!

I read about using aloe vera as shampoo on the internet (I think in this excellent blog post about natural no 'poo alternatives) and decided to give it a try.

It's the easiest thing in the world, just snap off a leaf, wet your hair in the shower, squeeze the gel out of the leaf, and massage it into your scalp.  I try to leave it for a few moments before rinsing it out.

Using the aloe vera leaves my hair soft and shiny and it seems to help hold the curl in my hair too (I've read about using aloe vera as a natural hair gel, so that makes sense!).

You can read more about my adventures in low 'poo and no 'poo here. 

(FYI - low 'poo means using less shampoo, and it's less extreme version of going no 'poo, which means using no shampoo.  I've worked my way up to no 'poo over the last year or so, I haven't used my sls free shampoo bar for a couple of months, and mostly I wash with water only, sometimes with aloe vera, or apple cider vinegar)

Would you ever stop using shampoo and start washing your hair with leaves?

Low 'Poo, an Update 1 Year on.

I can't actually believe it's been over a year since I started experimented with going low 'poo.

FYI - low 'poo means using less shampoo, and it's less extreme version of going no 'poo, which means using no shampoo.  

You can see all of my low 'poo blog posts here.

So, how's it going?  

It feels pretty normal by now to be only washing my hair once a week or so.  I used a natural, SLS free shampoo bar and rinsed with diluted apple cider vinegar, until Christmas when my shower broke a bit.  Since then I've been washing my hair once a week in the bath (confession, sometimes I only have a bath once a week.  No one seems to have noticed this in the slightest!  Perhaps I'm going low soap too!).  

I just swoosh my hair in the bath water a bit (I use a tiny bit of Lush bath bubble bar in the bath water, I don't know if that's cleaning my hair or not, makes it smell a bit nice though!), massage my scalp and rinse with a couple of jugs full of clean water.  I generally skip the shampoo bar and vinegar unless my hair feels really grimy (then I add shampoo) or really dry or dull (then I add vinegar).  I still use either almond oil, or coconut oil as a leave in conditioner after washing.  

I've washed it with bicarbonate of soda (the traditionally recommended no-poo option) just once in the last year.  I can see how it works, as it made my hair really fluffy and soft and got rid of a big greasy-patch that was annoying me.  If you google 'no 'poo' or 'low 'poo' you see a lot of people saying that using bicarb and vinegar ruined their hair, which I can believe.  I read some tips from the blog Lulastic, about using very diluted bicarb, very occasionally, which works great for me.

I'm really happy with being low 'poo, my hair is really shiny and feels healthy.  

Are you low 'poo?

Going Low 'Poo, an update.

After about 2 months of doing Low 'poo hair care, I have got the hang of it.

This is what works for me - 

Washing my hair once a week (ish) with solid shampoo and an apple cider vinegar conditioning rinse.

Washing my hair with plain water once or twice a week(ish).

Dampening my hair a little in the shower then combing it through, or dipping my brush in water while brushing my hair.  This makes it go curly and nice.

Using a little, tiny bit of almond oil smoothed through my hair after washing, as a leave in conditioner.

I have discovered the importance of a good hairbrush.  I found I need a really good one to distribute the oils in my hair effectively and make my hair less greasy.  Surprisingly, the best brush I've found for this is my £1 Primark, bright pink paddle brush.  It makes brushing my hair really easy and feels really nice and massage-y on my scalp.  I have broken 2 Kent Coolhog hairbrushes during this hair experiment (previously my favourite type of hairbrush).  

I have had to experiment with a few different hair styles, to deal with greasy days or just 'meh' hair days.  You can see in the photos above, I've been doing a lot of twisty things and a 3 bun hairstyle I learned from here.  I've been doing a lot of pigtails, plaits, and half up half downs too.  It's been good to learn some new hairstyles that don't give me a headache (anything too tight or with too many bobby pins gives me a migraine!  And I have monstrously thick hair, so putting it into an up-do is hard!).

I haven't had to use an intensive conditioner on my hair at all, in over 2 months.  I just haven't felt the need for it.  My hair used to be so dry I would have to do a hair mask with coconut oil every week.  I'm a bit scared if I put coconut oil on my hair now it would never wash out, or it would somehow disturb the balance my head has developed now.

You can see the first and second parts of my low 'poo adventures here and here.

Are you shampoo free or low 'poo?  Any tips?

Going Low 'poo, Weeks 3 to 4.

Here's an update on my low 'poo adventures.  You can see the start of my no hair washing experiment here.

Week 3 - I upped the amount I brushed my hair and it seemed a bit happier.  It was actually quite shiny.  It looked most unhappy when I just wake up, I move about quite a lot in bed and I wake up with it matted and in crazy shapes every morning which take a bit of brushing out.  I seem to have less dandruff, which I used to have quite often before.

Week 4 - It's greasy again this week, which I think was caused by my using a bit of my lush solid conditioner bar on my hair.  It was a bit dry and fly-away so I thought the conditioner would help, apparently my hair disagrees.  I have only washed it one other time this week, with the solid shampoo and vinegar.  As the week went on, with lots of brushing, it felt less greasy.  It was really straight after not getting wet and bring brushed a lot, so I started dipping my brush in water while I was brushing it, which seems to have brought some curliness and bounciness back to my hair.  Yey!

It seems to be getting a bit better.  Brushing it often seems to be the key.  I shall update you again in a few weeks.

Has anyone else tried this?

Going Low 'Poo. Weeks 1 and 2.

Just before Christmas I decided to go Low 'Poo.  

Here are some definitions for you in case you think I'm talking about something toilet-related!  No 'Poo means no shampoo, washing your hair using only natural substances, usually plain water, or bicarbonate of soda and vinegar.  Low 'Poo means using only shampoos that don't contain nasty-chemicals on your hair.  Google it if you want to know more, there's lots of info to read online.

Recently the Lush Karma shampoo bar and Jungle solid conditioner I'd used for years stopped working for my hair, I was fed up with it looking horrible so I bought some cheap bottle shampoo and conditioner from Aldi, which made my hair lovely and shiny again.  My routine was to wash it 3 or 4 times a week, towel dry, comb through with a wide toothed comb then smooth a bit of almond oil through as a leave in conditioner. 

But I didn't like the strong smell of the Aldi shampoo.  Or the fact it came in plastic bottles.  Or the fact it had lots of nasty chemicals and SLS and parabens in it.  And then I remembered that the Lush shampoo and conditioner had SLS's in too.  And then I decided to try something a little more natural. 

Here are some photos of my hair before.  I have thick, curlyish, shoulder length hair cut into layers. It tended to be nice and wavy and bouncy just after I washed it, then the waves and curls would gradually drop out the 'dirtier' it was.  I only ever brushed it right before I washed it, because brushing it would make it all frizzy and static.  It was nice and shiny too.  (I'm missing my old hair now I've started thinking about it!)

These are recent photos...

And these are of a very young me (there's one of me at my school leavers prom, doing the macarena, with enough hair gel to set my hair solid!  Others show my baby hair, how it looked when I used to slap the frizz ease on and when I had my hair super duper, waist-length long!  It was a lot curlier when I used to put product on it to hold the curl, I wonder if there's something natural I can replace that with...

Now I use this eco friendly, made in the UK, fair trade, SLS-free solid shampoo and apple cider vinegar as a conditioning rinse, or I wash it with plain water.

I'm still trying to work out the best method for me, I'm not sure yet how often I should be washing it and stuff like that, I'm working it out as I go along...

Week 1 - My hair was quite happy for the first week.  I washed it twice, with the solid shampoo and vinegar.  My hair doesn't smell like vinegar - hurrah!

Week 2 - I had a few of days of greasy hair, not just greasy at the top, but greasy all the way through the strands of my hair.  The worse bit is right in the middle at the back of my head, it is grease city.  Urgh.  My hair was flat like a pancake and I was most unhappy.  My scalp was really itchy too.  I washed it once with shampoo/vinegar and a couple of times I gave it a rinse and a bit of a head massage just with plain water while I was in the shower, which made it feel a bit better.  While my hair was still wet I put a little almond oil on, as a leave in conditioner.

Here are some photos of my hair during the start of it's low 'poo journey...including some crazy morning hair in photo one, and photo three of very flat greasy hair, which is what I mostly had.

Have you ever gone no or low 'poo?  Any tips?

Linking up with Frugal Days, Sustainable Ways.

Bamboo Toothbrush Review...3 Months On...

I thought I would do a follow up review of my bamboo toothbrush, in case any of you thought it had fallen to splinters in my mouth or something.

So this is my toothbrush after 3 months of use.  The old one is the top one, with my new one below for comparison.  As you can see, the bristles are a little bent, but overall it held up well.  The bristles had softened quite a lot by the end of the 3 months, but the handle was still fine, if stained a little white by toothpaste.  I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be white with toothpaste if I washed it, but I'm also pretty sure that life's too short to wash your toothbrush.

I was looking forward to putting my old bamboo toothbrush in the compost bin, but then I realised I could use it to clean round taps and things (am I a domestic goddess or what!?), so it's into the cleaning cupboard with it for now.

My bamboo toothbrush was £2.50 and came from Ebay.

All in all a great success, I am converted.

Linking up with Frugally Sustainable.

Make One Small Change - Use a Bamboo Toothbrush.

Adopting eco friendly habits, for me, is easier taken one small step at a time.  Lots of small changes add up to a big difference.

 

I bought a bamboo toothbrush, from here on Ebay.  It's handle is bamboo, and you could choose plastic or bamboo bristles.  I went all out and got the bamboo bristles, even though I thought they'd be scratchy and gross.  They are not scratchy and gross, they are nice and smooth and feel like plastic ones!  I like my bamboo toothbrush, it cleans my teeth nicely and it looks nice hanging out in my new bathroom (not like my previous florescent green one!).  It would be good if the end of the head was a little thinner, to make cleaning my back teeth easier, I can still get round there but it's a bit of a struggle.  I have a rechargeable electric toothbrush that I alternate with, so it's not too much of a problem.  And, it was £2.50, which is more than I'd pay for a plastic toothbrush, but cheaper than some of the other 'eco' options I've seen.

Plus, it came in a really cute box with a panda brushing his tooths on it!

Linking up with Frugal Days, Sustainable Ways and Like Mama Like Daughter.

Have you made an eco-friendly swap recently?

Product Swap...Puff to Flannel...

Epic battles have been fought in this house hold over this plasticy, nett-y bath puff...while pondering a more eco-friendly replacement for my previous bath puff, my mum got fed up of waiting and bought me a new one, which she now has taken against, because it's old and has gone big and puffy, so I had to think quickly this time...loofah's are too hard, hand crocheted cotton puffs get too soggy and heavy, the crochet hemp 'sponge' I had came unravelled...what to do?  Eventually I settled on a cotton  flannel (or face cloth), I know cotton isn't the most eco friendly fibre in the world, but surely it's better than plastic, at least it will biodegrade, and it's easy to wash.  It's also nice and scrubby, I have super-soft skin since I started using it.  I bought a pack of four, so I can wash them regularly and not run out.  A small, simple swap.

Have you made any swaps, big or small, to be more eco-conscious recently?

Product Swap...Face Masks..

The reason for posting this ridiculous photo of myself for the world to see is that I've swapped to a more eco friendly type of face mask.  Possibly.  I have tried to give up face masks altogether, which would be the most eco friendly choice, but it makes my skin unhappy..no matter how much I wash or exfoliate my face, or drink lots of water, or eat nice, healthy foods, or exercise, it gets all spotty and blackheady unless I do a facemask on it.  My skin is worse now than it was when I was a teenager!

I used to use those little sachets of mask, but the packaging (plastic foily stuff) isn't recyclable.  So after reading James Wong's   recipe for a homemade face mask from powdered clay and a quick bit of ebaying I found myself with a little bag of rhassoul Moroccan clay.  Which still leaves me with two problems...does Morocco need it's clay back?  Is it sustainable to dig up clay from Africa and ship it to England to go on my face?...and it still comes wrapped in plastic that I can't recycle (at the moment...although some plastic bags will be recyclable at supermarkets soon ).

So I have my little bag of clay, which I will use up (I mix it with a little water, then put in on, let it harden then wash it off, just like a normal facepack, it makes my skin all nice and soft and gets rid of some of the goo blocking my pores too), but then after that I need to find another alternative I think. 

I've also started using Purity Organic anti aging serum and mask, which was on offer in Superdrug for £2!  I've never heard of them before, but it's really nice and moisturisy...I've started to notice a few wrinkles creeping in and I'd like them to stop there please, I'm only 26!

Do you use facemasks?  Are they eco friendly?  Please tell me if they are and my skin will thank you forever!

New hair...

Meet Stanley, he's my Christmas grass head/grass hedgehog and he's been busy growing himself some new hairs...

I have new red hairs too!!

Product swap, recycleable plastic toothbrush.

Father Christmas knows me well, this year he put a lovely pink 'Preserve' toothbrush in my stocking!  I've been wanting to find a more eco-friendly toothbrush for ages (there's a website that sells wooden ones but frustratingly I can't get the page to load!) and this one is made from recycled plastic and I can post it back to be recycled again!  And it only cost £2.99 (I've communicated with Santa and he let me know that he bought it from Sainsburys)! And it's pink!  And actually it's a really good toothbrush!  I would still like to try a wooden toothbrush, but I think preserve toothbrushes are a good compromise for the time being.

What kind of toothbrush do you use?

Product Swap, Soild Moisturiser.

I keep a little tube of moisturiser for my hands on me at all times (I have pretty owchy eczema on my hands and if my skin gets dry it's very painful so I moisturise them every time I wash them) but I ran out of little tubes a while ago...I've been taking an old hotel-free-shampoo bottle full of my mum's posh moisturiser for a while, but that's run out too and I wanted a more eco alternative...an epiphany came to me one day, involving an old vaseline tin, a knife and a Lush massage bar.  I cut the end off one (mine's a Therapy one and smells lovely, Lush do a solid hand moisturiser but, alas, it's not vegan) popped it in my tin and now I have solid moisturiser wherever I go!

Product Swap, Aloe Vera.

I've had this tube of organic aloe vera gel that I bought when I used to work in Holland and Barretts as a Saturday girl. That was in 2003. (I now feel old!) After being applied to many sunburns, eczema-ry bits and other random rashes the tube is empty. The tube is also unrecyclable. No more shall be bought! Instead I bought an aloe vera plant from a plant sale at a National Trust place last weekend (we bought 6 large trays of various plants for £5! It was plant heaven!), he cost 50p - he was all brown and dry and sad when I bought him, but a bit of gravel round his bottom, some water and sunshine and he's a lot better. And when I need some aloe vera gel I can snap a bit of leaf of, squeeze it and apply the gel that comes out!

Product swap, Exfloliators and Blackboard.

Here are the most recent changes I've been making to green myself up a bit!

Exfoliator - I've had this pink face brush thingy (I think it was from Boots, but I've seen more natural wooden looking ones in the body shop) for yonks, and the pink exfoliating glove came free with my epilator, now I've run out of both my face and body exfoliator I'll be using these reusable options instead and saving all the chemicals that were no doubt in my products and the plastic tubs they came in.

From notes to blackboard - me and mum like to leave each other notes everyday ('dear sooz please tidy the computer table' 'dear mum I've gone to ems for tea see you later' 'dear sooz have a nice day hope you've stopped having a runny nose' etc etc etc) and I'd been gritting my teeth about these notes, it's lovely, but I kept thinking about how much paper it was using, so I was very glad when Mum suggested using the blackboard we already have in the kitchen to write notes for each other on - I didn't have to do any of my usual mind tricks/whining! Today I have drawn a picture of a bunny on it - because I'd like a pet bunny but I'm not allowed one (now she's being environmentally friendly I can use my mind tricks to achieve other goals!).

Product swap...

I've been thinking about ways to reduce my waste and at the moment I'm trying to find alternatives to some of the high waste products I use...in the last couple of weeks I've made these changes...

I've stopped using prepacked pizza bases wrapped in plastic and with a polystyrene bit and started making my own using a recipe given to me by a friend. You can even make a big batch and freeze some for later, so pizza is still a quick tea.

Luckily we have several friends with apple trees who have a glut of fruit at the moment and need me to help eat them all up! (an apple tree is definitely on my 'when I have a garden...' list) So we haven't bought any apples for about a month.

My face wash in a squeezy tube ran out, to be replaced by a nice, vegan, biodegradable bar of soap which came packed in a cardboard box - which ticks all of my categories!

I've been using almond oil for ages, but wanted to mention it because it replaces so much of the stuff I used to use, it has no synthetic chemicals in it, comes in a glass bottle and is cheeap (that bit bottle cost me £2.99 and will last me about a year). I use it everyday as a moisturiser instead of body lotion, I use it to moisturise my face if I'm not going outside in the sun (otherwise I use moisturiser with a sunscreen), as a night cream, on a reusable make-up remover pad to take off my make up (on the rare occasion I put some on!), I use a tiny drop on my hair after I've washed it, or if it goes fluffy, instead of frizz ease, and I use it instead of intensive hair conditioner (I put a load on my hair while it's dry, tie it up to let the oil soak in for half and hour, then shampoo it out). Almond oil, I love you!

I've been using hankies for a while now, but now I've run out of paper tissues the swap will be permanent because I'm never buying disposable tissues again!

Experiments with soap squishing...

So, I'd been hording a lot of the tiny pieces you get when you've come to the end of a bar of Lush solid shampoo that you can't really use cos they're too small and you end up with millions of tiny bits of shampoo crumbled into your hair that you can't get out, but you can't bring yourself to throw away because shampoo bars are expensive and they smell so good! I gathered all my tiny shampoo bar bits into a silicone cupcake case, put this into a pan of boiling water and waited for the bits to melt together to form a great, big, uber shampoo bar.

After about 40 minutes of simmering it on the hob with the lid on and an overnight chill in the fridge I ended up with this....

Which crumbles into my hair and then I can't get it out, and which, as my mother rightly pointed out, I probably used more energy cooking it for all that time than I saved by reusing my shampooy fragments!

But! I wasn't ready to give up on saving my little bits of soap and shampoo bar, so after much google searching I have decided on this method to reuse them both...

1. Find an old sock or cut off the foot of an old pair of tights (I have gone down the tight-y route this time as I just so happen to have a bag full of old tights I am also hording and hoping to reuse!)

2. Every time your soap or shampoo bar gets to the too-small-to-be-usable stage put it into the sock or tight-foot.

3. When the sock/tight-foot is full tie a knot in the top of it to keep the soapy bits in.

4. The sock keeps all the bits from disintegrating on to you, but you can still lather the soap through the sock, either directly onto your hand or body or onto a sponge or whatever else you use in the shower.

I haven't tried it out yet because my tight-foot of soapy bits is nowhere near full enough, but I think it sounds like it'll work! There are lots of other ways of recycling soap scraps all over the internet, but the way I'm using seems the easiest and the the one that uses less energy.

Cotton Wool...How to Make Make Up Removal Pads...

On to the very glamourous topic of cotton wool.

This is something I didn't really think about very much before, but now I'm thinking about how to stop buying stuff and how to stop throwing stuff away I've become fixated on it! How many cotton wool pads do I throw away a year (352!!!) and the same amount of cotton baby ear bud thingys! Thats 704 bits of rubbish into landfill every year. Just from me!
Boots botanicals range, the CO-OP and Marks and Spencers both sell fairtrade cotton wool products. Boots and Marks and Spencers also sell cotton wool buds with paper stems, which will biodegrade.



I still need some 'real' cotton wool occasionally, but for taking make up off and things like that I made these
Really easy,

• Take something made of towelling (I reused some old face flannels). Or any other fabric you think would be nice for make-up removal pads.
• Cut them into the shape/size you want (the ones I made are a bit too small, but they still work fine...I drew round a glass)
• Place two of your towelling bits together, right sides (sides you want showing on the outside) facing out, wrong sides together.
• Using a zigzag stitch on a sewing machine sew all the way around the outside of the towelling shapes, I went round several times so it was nearly all covered in sewing to stop it fraying.
• Tada! They are made! Woohooo! :D

Use them with water or make up remover (I use almond oil to take off my make up) just like cotton wool.
Before washing, soak them in some warm water for a while, then put them in with your normal wash.
You can also buy them online too, search something like 'reusable make up remover pads' on google.