I can't be the only one who's noticed that, while things we really need (housing, food, energy) are getting more expensive, the things we don't need at all are getting cheaper.
Case in point: I could buy a completely new summer wardrobe from Kmart, Shein or Temu for less than my weekly grocery shop.
I could buy a completely new summer wardrobe from Kmart, Shein or Temu for less than my weekly grocery shop
But when you can buy a brand-new toy, home decoration or piece of clothing and have it shipped to your house from China for less than five bucks, it's hard to ignore the feeling that someone, somewhere is paying the real price.
I don't have the solution to unethical global supply chains, but I have started to make some changes in my own lifestyle to bring back a sense of appreciation for and connection to the products I consume. How? I've started making things from scratch.
Making things: Not just for crafty folk
Now let me preface this by saying I am not a Crafty Person. I'll never be that mum hunched over the sewing machine come book week. I've never dabbled in making my own jewellery or decorating cakes.
But what I have always been is a Stingy Person. So, while my non-crafty inner core rebels against the idea of gathering the materials and know-how to create something, my inner Scrooge can usually be convinced if I can make a strong economic case for it.
I am not a Crafty Person ... But what I have always been is a Stingy Person
It started with bread. Like many others, I started making my own sourdough during COVID and the quiet joy of eating homemade loaves meant that I never stopped. I continued with exploring making food from scratch, enjoying the satisfaction it brings.
But lately I've taken a step into previously unchartered waters – skincare.
Why skincare?
As a woman in my 30s, frugality often goes out the window when faced with a fancy skincare product. The latest one to snag my interest was an organic beef tallow moisturiser. I bought a tiny pot for an eye-watering sum and fell in love.
But when it came time to replenish said tiny pot, my miserly brain started to whir. If the product was made out of beef tallow… wouldn't it be possible to recreate it at home for a fraction of the price?
Frugality often goes out the window when faced with a fancy skincare product
You see, I had already started rendering my own beef tallow for use as a cooking oil. Pre-made jars of tallow are expensive, but a kilo of beef fat from the butcher is usually just a few dollars. All you have to do to turn it into tallow is melt it down and sieve it.
In fact, I remembered that I already had a jar of homemade tallow just sitting in my fridge.
Attempt number 1: A little on the nose
Heart pumping, I started looking up recipes. I realised I could just take my cooking tallow, melt it down and then just mix in some essential oils and voila – fancy face cream for a fiver.
It only took about 10 minutes to produce a full 250mL jar, then I just popped it in the fridge to set overnight. The next day, I applied my cream for the very first time. My skin drank in the moisture and it felt so good massaging something so pure into all the super dry places around my hairline, eyes and ears.
There was only one hitch…. there was a very slight beefy smell wafting through the essential oils. Wondering if it was all in my head, I asked a friend to sniff my face and tell me what they smelt.
"Hmmm, I'm not sure… it smells kind of…. edible," was the response.
There was a very slight beefy smell wafting through the essential oils
Now I'm not a wasteful person, and honestly, the way the product nourished my skin was absolutely divine, so I used the whole jar happily and nobody ever commented that I smelt like meat.
Still, when I confessed to my friends, they chuckled about my eccentric, slightly meaty-smelling moisturiser choice and my general weird thriftiness.
But once the jar was empty, I decided I was going to make The Ultimate Face Cream, and prove all the critics wrong.
The only essential ingredient in my skincare routine.
Attempt number 2: A success story
The second time around, I did my research.
I found out that in order to get rid of the beefy aroma, you need to melt the fat in water, then leave it to set, and pour away the water.
Every time you repeat this process it essentially 'washes' the fat, getting rid of the impurities that cause the smell and leaving you with a pure product. (You can actually make soap out of beef tallow – animal fat is what soap was originally made of.)
So, while my husband was out grocery shopping I texted him a totally normal request: "Buy me some beef fat from the butcher because the beauty industry is a scam."
He simply responded with a thumbs up – he knows better than to question my requests.
The next day was my day off work, which I spend with my two-year-old daughter. Like any normal toddler, she loves helping mummy with whatever the day brings. And on this day, I handed her a child-safe kiddy cutter and a slab of beef fat and told her to get cutting.
Cutting the fat: a toddler-friendly activity.
She took to the task like a champ, and within ten minutes or so we had an entire kilo of beef fat gently melting in a pot of water.
Once it was all melted down, I poured it through a sieve lined with "cheesecloth" (aka an old but clean muslin baby wrap).
Then I left it to set in the fridge until it formed a solid lump, and drained the water that had separated out.
I got out my hand blender and whizzed up the whole concoction, which transformed it from a kind of flat-looking jar of fat into this amazing white, soft, fluffy moisturiser
I went about my usual day with my daughter, every now and then repeating the melting and setting process, until I had completed it a total of three times and I was absolutely sure there was zero meat smell lingering.
Then, the fun part.
I took my now totally pure, absolutely odourless white tallow, melted it in the pot and mixed in some essential oils (I used May Chang and Orange oils because they are both relatively cheap and I had them in the cupboard already). Then I left it in the fridge until it was half set, but still soft.
I headed out to the garden to the aloe vera plants that seem to grow totally of their own volition, harvested a few pieces and scraped out the insides into a bowl. Then I grabbed a couple spoons of honey from the jar in the pantry and mixed it all into the cream.
Finally, I got out my hand blender and whizzed up the whole concoction, which transformed it from a kind of flat-looking jar of fat into this amazing white, soft, fluffy moisturiser.
One of the two jars of face cream my efforts yielded.
The crowd goes wild
Now, the creation of my ultra-fragrant, rich and indulgent face cream was of course reward enough in itself, but is a victory ever really complete without drawing the admiration of others?
The evening after I finished my creation, I went out for dinner with my friends, asking them both to stroke and sniff my face.
The response? Silky soft and amazingly fragrant.
One friend asked if she could have a jar for herself, which I generously agreed to, as my 1kg of fat had yielded a lot of cream. The other, who is a massage therapist, asked me if I thought I could produce it in bulk for her to use as her massage oil.
Was it all worth it?
My inner Stingy Person was satisfied. Mission accomplished. Not only was my skin silky soft and fragrant, but my brutally honest friends had been won over by my incredibly cheap and effective moisturiser.
All up I spent $5.15 on beef fat (plus maybe $1 worth of honey, and $4–5 worth of the essential oils I had knocking around in my cupboard) to create enough skin cream to last me a year.
Is the beauty industry a scam? Maybe. Not everyone has the time, stomach, or frankly, the wherewithal, to painstakingly render beef tallow fat for hours, but I'm ultimately glad I did.
All up I spent $5.15 on beef fat ... to create enough skin cream to last me a year
It's my way of calling BS on an industry that tries to convince us that you need to buy 50 different products in plastic packaging just to look passably attractive.
And for me, nothing compares to the pure satisfaction of taking a few raw ingredients and using my own two hands to turn them into something really useful.
Stock images: Getty, unless otherwise stated.
