Skin care doesn’t need to be a complex chore: It can be simple, natural and basic. Find out how to make your skin radiant, healthy, and beautiful with these mostly-free, couldn’t be simpler tried-and-true techniques.

1. Cleansing Routine: A beauty must! Cleanse your skin twice daily (only once if your skin is dry) using a mild, natural, inexpensive cleanser designed for your skin type. Add a couple of drops essential oil of rose, spearmint, or orange to your cleanser to boost its cleaning effect and aromatic quality. Cleansing your skin is especially important before going to bed, because your body excretes toxins through your skin as you sleep. If facial pores are clogged with makeup and dirt, breakouts can occur. If you perspire a lot in your line of work or exercise heavily, then rinse off and massage your body with a coarse cloth or loofah before retiring to remove salt and dead-skin buildup. Your skin needs to breathe while you sleep!

2. Exercise: Try to exercise outside, to help oxygenate your cells with fresh air and facilitate waste removal through your skin. Exercises such as walking, biking, in-line skating, and weight lifting improve cardiovascular fitness and muscular endurance, which translates into increased energy and a rosy complexion. If you live in a city, try to find a green space—a park or a greenway—in which to exercise. If city streets, with their attendant pollution, are your only outdoor option, exercising in a gym may be a better alternative.

3. Sleep, Blissful Sleep: I don’t care what else you do to your skin, if you are sleep deprived your skin will look sallow, dull, tired, and saggy; with your puffy eyes, you will resemble a frog prince or princess. And of course, your energy level will be less than desirable. Sleep: It’s the best-kept skin care secret there is!

4. Sunlight: Ten to 15 minutes of unprotected exposure to sunlight several times a week is essential to the health of your bones and skin. It helps your body absorb calcium, due to the skin’s ability to convert the sun’s rays into vitamin D. Sun exposure helps heal eczema, psoriasis, and acne, and energizes your body. Plus those warm rays just make you feel good all over. If your dermatologist advises you to avoid the sun entirely, other sources of vitamin D include egg yolks, fish liver oil, vitamin-D-supplemented soy or cow’s milk, organ meats, salmon, sardines, and herring.

5. Water: What goes in must go out, and water helps move everything along. Impurities not disposed of in a timely manner via the internal organs of elimination (such as the kidneys, liver, lungs, and large intestine) will find an alternate exit, namely your skin, sometimes referred to as the “third kidney.” Pimples and rashes may develop as your body tries to unload its wastes through your skin. Eight to 12, 8-ounce glasses of pure water a day combined with a fibrous diet will help cleanse your body of toxins and keep your colon functioning as it should. Water also keeps your skin hydrated and moisturized, so drink up!