Budget Style

If every department store and high-end cosmetics site disappeared tomorrow, I would still find plenty of beauty products to spend my money on. It would just be a lot less money, because I'd be spending it at the drugstore in their makeup and skin care aisles.

Our readers have recommended a few of their favorite cheap products. What's yours?

So, once again, we've reached the change of season only to discover that all my summer shoes have walked off in the middle of the night, never to be seen again.

Fortunately, it's pretty easy to get cheap shoes online. Basically, there's no need to leave home anymore. You are welcome.

Image: EraPhernalia Vintage on Etsy

This might be my biggest skin care product confession: I actually hate Cetaphil. This is pretty much beauty blog treason, but I'm fessing up, because I don't want you to feel like a weirdo if the annointed drugstore skin cleanser doesn't do it for you. (Also, because I love complaining, but isn't that what the internet is for?)

If you have sensitive skin and five dollars, you try my favorite cleanser, Olay Foaming Face Wash.

If you've got those red, bumpy patches on the back of your arms (or legs, or face) you know how hard they can be to get rid of. Chicken skin, known to derms as keratosis pilaris, affects a large portion of the population and is notoriously tricky to treat.

Although it's tough to get rid of entirely, you can reduce the appearance of the problem with lotions containing alpha-hydroxy acids. One of my favorites is Lac-Hydrin Five. It's available at many drugstores and via the all-powerful internets, where everything is beautiful all the time.

What if I told you that you could moisturize your face for $5 a month? Well, you totally can. CeraVe Facial Moisturizing Lotion is $12 - 15 for a bottle, lasts three months, and is available at most drugstores. It even has 30 SPF, so you don't have to drench yourself in greasy sunscreen to keep those wrinkle-inducing rays off your face this summer.

The first time I used Biore Pore Strips, I was a teenager. I found a free sample in a magazine, and I was super psyched to try it. What teenager wouldn't love the idea of getting rid of blackheads and then being able to look at them afterward?

Afterwards, I almost wanted to bronze the strip. It was the perfect combination of awesome and disgusting. But did it actually work?

If you had to pick only, say, five beauty products to use for the rest of your life, what would they be? What if they could only cost $10 or less?

There's no question in my mind that I would bring St. Ive's Apricot Scrub to my desert island, and Pond's Cold Cream. I'd make room for CoverGirl Professional Mascara, for sure, and Frizz-Ease Hair Serum. After that, it gets fuzzy. (My list. Not my hair. See previous re: hair serum.)

What would you bring? Tell me about your favorite cheap beauty products here.

Every year, when spring rolls around, I look in my closet and wonder who's been eating all of my clothes. Someone must be. Otherwise, there is no explanation for why I never have a single thing to wear when the weather gets warm.

Anyway, I don't have a solution to the mystery of the disappearing duds, but I do have some recommendations about finding cute, cheap clothes to replace them.

If you can get cheaper dresses than these, you should either be running your own budget style site, or you should stop stealing clothes.

These are the absolute cheapest summer dresses that still meet our stringent criteria. (Which are basically: Must not be a glorified shirt, must not be see-through, and must actually be cute.)

I'm not a big fan of the hot weather. My hair frizzes up, my makeup slides off, perfect strangers on the subway ask me if I'm OK. (Please note: this is an actual thing that has happened to me, more than once.)

But I love summer for one reason, and one reason only: cheap summer dresses.