Homemade for the Homestead Medicine Chest {Lip Balm}

I don't know about you, but as a family of 6 we can really go through the lip balm in the winter. Our house has wood heat and even with a kettle of water on it our house feels really dry inside. I've been looking for a reason to make some lip balm and since my last tube just ran out, today was the day.

The process is simple, the ingredients cheap and the time very little for a HUGE end product. I think this recipe would make 15-20 tubes of lip balm. That's more than enough to use and to share or give as gifts. The initial investment on some of the supplies will be a bit more, of course, but if you are planning on following my Homestead Medicine Chest posts, we'll be using basically the same supplies for most things. How's that for multi purpose?

Some I did in tubes....

Some I did in tins....and then I ran out of tubes and tins and used whatever I could find to fill up!

Like this small Altoids tin. Baby food jars, small glass jars, anything you can get your finger into to get it back out will work.

I used the recipe I found here and it worked great!

Lip Balm

1 oz beeswax
1/2 cup olive oil
1/2 teaspoon Spearmint oil
1 teaspoon honey

In a glass measuring cup, add your beeswax, olive oil and honey. Put it into a saucepan and carefully pour water into the pan until it comes up past the level of the oil and beeswax in the measuring cup. Put on the stove on low heat and stir until it melts completely. The beeswax doesn't really melt into the rest of the stuff, so just stir it in well. Take the cup out of the water, add the spearmint oil and and stir. Quickly pour into your containers.

A couple quick notes: her recipe calls for 1/2 oz bees wax, but in her comments she says she uses 1 oz because she likes a firmer texture. I agree, and to be honest I might add a tad bit more next time I make it myself.
She also calls for peppermint oil and I used spearmint....that's because when I did a search for "menthol" (one of the main ingredients in name brand lip balms) the search returned with some information on menthol. Here is what I found and I ultimately chose to go with Spearmint as opposed to peppermint because of the kids. Were I making this just for Kevin and myself, I would have used peppermint and decreased the amount to 1/4 teaspoon. Spearmint contains .05% menthol as compared to peppermints 40%, keep that in mind. Just an option for you because I know my girls complain that brand like Carmex and Chap Ice are too "spicy" feeling for them. Use what you feel is right for you!

So, I think that was an easy foray into making some home remedies. No one thinks about it, but even lip balms are loaded with unnecessary and sometimes scary ingredients. At least when you are making your own you are controlling the ingredient quality, the ingredient content and you can add any special things you want. You could replace some of the olive oil with coconut, sweet almond oil, cocoa butter, avocado oil. You could add a little vitamin E if you wanted....a different essential oil (just please be sure to buy them from a website that can tell you if they are ok for lip balms. Some are not.) or leave it exactly as it is and still have a fantastic lip balm at a fraction of the store bought price.

Sounds good to me!