Dr. Bronner's Organic Pure-Castile Liquid Soap Refill Almond -- 32 fl oz

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Wellness is probably on your radar, hard to miss considering the spotlight it gets. That doesn’t mean you pay it much mind though. It’s easy to understand why. Wellness can feel expensive (monthly fitness-facility fees), daunting (complicated meal plans with strange ingredients) and flat-out unappealing (doctor appointments). But there are simple and appealing ways to live a more healthful life. They’re light on your wallet too. Here are four items that fit the bill. Let them launch you then serve as inspiration for other cost-effective ways to welcome more wellness in your life.

Budget-Friendly Wellness Essentials

1. Journal

We called these diaries in my day, and you wrote in them. Now they’re called “journals,” and you “journal” in them. Tomato, tomato. Either way they cost under 10 bucks, perhaps just 50 cents if you decide on a spiral-bound notebook instead of a sleeker number.

why it's a woohoo! for wellness

Getting your thoughts and feelings down means they’ve made it to shore instead of swimming around your head. Once they’ve found firm ground they can actually go somewhere — or rather, you can make them go somewhere, if you want. It can be hard to understand what’s fraying your nerves, even if it’s as mundane as daily frustration with your blender, without being able to articulate it. Writing it out pins it down. What’s more, your journal (ahem, diary) is a great reference later in life, a way to gauge whether you’re repeating patterns or have grown from them. It’s also a good vehicle for setting goals and penning gratitude.

2. Fan

Forget about a white noise app, which means your phone stays on all night, or a white noise machine, which serves a single purpose. Get a fan. It’s affordable, and you can use it not only to drown out noise but also to cool down. Box-style fans hum at just the right level and blend into a room easily with their basic shape.

why it's a woohoo! for wellness

Unless you live in a neighborhood and household that's completely silent, and you don’t mind sleeping in complete silence, you need something to cancel noise or provide background noise. Good sleep, as has been well-established, is one of the most important things for your health. Your body heals and regenerates while you sleep. It fights illness and keeps illness away. It relieves you from being absent-minded and from getting into an argument you’d never have entertained had you slept through the night.

3. Electric kettle

An electric kettle one is on the pricier side, but it's the only way you can find the perfect temp to steep sensitive teas. Green tea, for example, needs to be brewed quite a bit below boiling. But directions on most tea boxes are simplified for the precision-kettle free: “bring to just under a boil” (tough to determine) or “let water sit for 1 minute after boiling then pour over tea” (imprecise, given a full pot is much hotter than a few ounces after 1 minute). If you brew tea every day your return on investment for this item will be high.

why it's a woohoo! for wellness

Drinking a warm cup of anything makes you slow down. It also confers nourishing yourself and finding an interlude of satisfaction that’s not guilt-ridden with saturated fat, refined sugar or other wellness foils: You take your time picking out the loose-leaf or little bagged wonder that best meets the moment (caffeinated or herbal? calming or tart?). You wait for the water to heat (a minute to do nothing), and then you wait for the tea to brew (anticipation). It also connects you to others, which is good for mental health: Simply holding a cup of something warm can make you feel closer to whomever you're talking to. And don't be discouraged from drinking a warm cup of tea during summer. You'll drink it even more slowly if you're in a warm space because its warmth will moderate you and because it’ll stay warm for longer.

4. Spiralizer

You probably won't use a spiralizer every day, but given it's easy to get one that works well for under $25, it's a minimal investment — one that’ll redefine your relationship to veggies for the better.

why it's a woohoo! for wellness

If you do it all the time, cooking can be a burden at worst and tedious at best. Adding a dose of fun makes it ... fun. The first time I used a spiralizer I kept feeding more into it because it was such a delight to watch the “noodles” unwind from the machine using the toyish crank. You know what that meant? I was stuck with a lot more zucchini/carrot/sweet potato to eat, a lot more healthful food. The most labor intensive part is cooking noodles that need to be cooked (sweet potato, for example). The noodles, no matter their type, are easy to make a meal of. Just toss them with good olive oil, salt and pepper, along with beans for protein and crushed garlic for a pop. Or if you're too lazy to crush garlic, sprinkle garlic powder on the dish. End with a squeeze of lemon for some vitamin C. Simple and tasty. Mitra Malek writes about wellness, the very topic of this piece. A half-dozen other cheap-ish items didn’t make the cut, so that gives you a sense of how many more you can find.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_text_separator title="Featured Products" border_width="2"][vc_row_inner equal_height="yes" content_placement="middle" gap="35"][vc_column_inner width="1/3"][vc_single_image image="177331" img_size="full" alignment="center" onclick="custom_link" img_link_target="_blank" css=".vc_custom_1723842992910{padding-right: 7% !important;padding-left: 7% !important;}" link="https://www.vitacost.com/tru-earth-wool-dryer-balls"][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width="1/3"][vc_single_image image="177330" img_size="full" alignment="center" onclick="custom_link" img_link_target="_blank" css=".vc_custom_1723843007568{padding-right: 7% !important;padding-left: 7% !important;}" link="https://www.vitacost.com/new-wave-enviro-alkaline-pitcher-filter"][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width="1/3"][vc_single_image image="177329" img_size="full" alignment="center" onclick="custom_link" img_link_target="_blank" css=".vc_custom_1723843022816{padding-right: 7% !important;padding-left: 7% !important;}" link="https://www.vitacost.com/himalayan-chandra-porcelain-neti-pot-with-30-sachets"][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][/vc_column][/vc_row]