This is first in a series of short posts about products I use or tips I have to keep cooking & cleaning in my tiny kitchen a (mostly) positive experience. In case it doesn’t go w/out saying, I’m not getting paid for any of the products I mention…they’re simply things I like.

❤︎

I’m going to be honest with you: I have always hated my hands. Even before I took up cooking full~time, I had very weak nails, and now that I do the dishes close to a dozen times a day, they’ve gotten much, much worse. I actually have a photo album on my phone, filled with images of elaborate or cute or gorgeous or even simple manicures, which I occasionally gaze at longingly, like Pinterest porn.

Oh, stop judging me…you’ve got your weird shit too!

And before you ask, yes yes, I have bought proper washing~up gloves—I even bought the kind for sensitive skin & hands—I just can’t remember to use them half of the time! Not to mention the fact that when I can’t feel the dishes as I clean them, I’m never 100% convinced I’m cleaning them very well…and personal testing has proved that hypothesis to be true more often than not.

As for hand lotions and balms for my persistently dry skin, I swear I’ve tried all of ’em. But it always seems that, as soon as I put something onto my cracking skin and dry nails to help them look & feel better, I just have to wash it off before I start cooking again. Not to mention that, as much as I genuinely want soft hands, I kinda can’t stand the feeling of lotion on them?

Still, I’m a desperate woman, so I have a literal pile of stronger products, from wonderfully scented cuticle balms to intense creams originally designed for fishermen. Each has their own merit, which is why I not only keep them around, but keep buying them, but I honestly tend to use them only when I’m willing to trade the stickiness or oiliness for less damaged hands.

Generally the best solution I have found is simple baby lotion. It’s designed to moisturize without being greasy, it doesn’t have a strong scent, and it soaks in well enough that it really does help somewhat with dry hands if you’re fastidious about using it. However, I’ve never been called anything close to fastidious, so I use it mostly after washing my hands before I sit down to eat or watch television, as well as before going to bed at night.

I can’t recall how I stumbled across the idea of hand serums instead of lotions, but when I found this humorously~named one, I was curious, despite it costing slightly more than I would prefer to pay. Most of the other serums I checked had some pretty dicey things in them—placenta? snail slime?? human stem cells???—but this one is horror-show-free, it has a cute design that screams out to the aesthete in me, and it seems to strike a perfect balance between having icky greasy fingers and allowing my hands to fall off entirely.

Having predictably difficult skin everywhere else on my body, I’m no stranger to having a skin care regimen, so I figured that if serum worked half as well on my splotchy, fluorescently red face, maybe it could help with my hands too? And I like it! It takes a wee bit of time to think up devious deeds whilst maniacally rubbing my hands together while it soaks in, but after it does so, I can barely tell it’s there…and I honestly feel like it has been helping overall.

I’ll be straight with you: nothing is ever going to be perfect. And nothing is going to completely help hands which must transition from prep to washing to cooking to washing to cleaning to washing them again…but even a small success–or even just winning the battle against rough skin for one day—has become a blessing.

You obviously don’t need to use the same products that I do, but if you have dry hands like I do, you need to do something. And I have to admit that, ever since I decided to drop the coin on a pricey hand serum, I’ve also gotten better at overall hand care, and the little things do add up to a notable difference…provided I’m not just washing my hands once again before diving back into touching something else to be eaten, I try to put serum on my hands immediately after washing them; I also got myself a pretty glass pump made from a Mason jar to place on a shelf over my sink, and I filled it with unscented baby lotion with a dropper or two full of almond oil, which I try to use when I take a break in the kitchen; and I honestly try very hard to remember my dishwashing gloves!

Oh! And two more small things! I started using a delicious~smelling cuticle oil before going to bed, when it has the time to be most beneficial. (And, you know: when my ADHD brain can remember to do that, too!)…

Also, when I worked in professional settings, my hands weren’t great, but they weren’t this terrifying either. Probably because I was often required to use a lot of well fitting, latex~free gloves for food handling and because I didn’t have to do half as many dishes. So recently, I’ve started wearing disposable gloves for things which either gross me out or are very difficult to clean up. They save on the sheer number of times I have to wash my hands, and that does help.

Depending upon your relationship with environmentalism, this might not be a solution for you…but for me, knowing that my ward of Tokyo literally incinerates everything and only pretends to recycle, has helped me relax my firmly held hippie ways & to understand that occasionally using disposable gloves or a Ziploc bag isn’t chipping away at the environment in the way I always assumed it did.

Seriously: major corporations created the bulk of the slowly simmering pot of water we’re now festering in, and together they spend zillions of dollars a day making individual people think that we must be the true force for environmental change. Not that personal gestures don’t help! They do! Just that I have come to realize they are gestures, and occasionally making my life easier doesn’t make me the guy who is actually setting fire to the rainforest.

But I think I digress? Yes! I digress! And I definitely tangent!

You know what…let’s just call it a day! I’ve rambled on long enough about my weird hands and my own battles with environmentalism, and I probably need to get up and go put on some of that really nourishing but really goopy hand cream I keep next to my sofa. And then try not to touch my face. Or anything else for that matter.

I hope you have a happy, well-moisturized day. And drop a comment below to let me know how you take care of your hands! I’m always looking to add new bottles and tubes to my collection!