January No Buy on Toiletries Update

This month, I challenged myself to a No Buy January with regard to natural or regular cosmetics and toiletries, due to the substantial size of my current stash.  I'd bought quite a few things in the lead up to Christmas, and was developing quite a spending habit with regard to natural beauty products, so the challenge was to help prevent the habit getting any worse.

I have to report that I had a good month, although I didn't succeed in buying nothing at all in this category.  As I said in my post about this challenge, if I, or anyone else in our family did run out of anything essential, that I didn't have a stash of, I would go ahead and purchase replacements and this indeed is what happened, causing me to purchase the following:

1 Tube toothpaste for LB £1
1 Tube toothpaste for myself and OH £4 (We use Cordosyl which isn't recommended (by my dentist anyway) for children)
1 Can of hairspray for me £1 - (Non-natural, as natural is far too expensive, if it is even possible to find it)
8 Pocket tissue packs 99p
Some personal feminine hygiene products £1.59 (Enough said)

I did also purchase a bottle of Deep Steep Shower Gel (a natural brand) that was reduced to £2 in TK MAXX, as it was such a good deal and will definitely get used at some point. (I did, however, use my Christmas present money for this, so it didn't come out of the household budget)

These were the only things I purchased this month, so I think I did okay, and the exercise has hopefully slowed down my purchases of natural beauty products.

I was able to make small inroads into the stash, as I at least started to use the following items from it:

A bottle of shampoo
A pack of dental floss
A moisturising day cream
Two bottles of mouthwash
A bottle of distilled witch hazel
A tube of concealer
One soap
One bamboo toothbrush

(Only 13 more items left in it to start using - mostly makeup!)

I set aside a full  tube of conditioner to donate to the Food Bank, as I no longer wanted to use it, due to it not being conditioning enough on my hair, which tends to be quite dry and brittle.

In addition, as already posted, I made some home made stick deodorants this month, to replace one that I finished. As I already had the ingredients, I didn't have any extra monetary outlay for these and they seem to be working really well, so should keep me going for a while.

I'm going to give myself a break from this challenge next month and possibly resume it in March, as there are quite a few basics that I need to stock up on and I'd like to visit a Natural and Organic Beauty show in London at the end of the month.  I'll try not to go too mad I promise.

I did actually manage to keep to the household/toiletry/pet care budget for the first time in 3 months, this month, so the challenge did work in this respect.  (Unfortunately, I didn't fare so well with the food budget and went well over on that this month!)  Baby steps.