🫧🧼Hygiene Tips I Learned Recently🧼🫧
The TikTok algorithm has finally borne fruit, and I went down a rabbithole of people talking about their best tips. And me being me, I took notes. Credit goes mostly to vanilla swirl and pickleflipflops for these, their videos have saved me I swear.
Using glycolic acid as a scalp exfoliator. I'm allergic to a lot of things they put in normal scalp exfoliators so this one is a game changer.
Double shampooing. My hairdresser told me to do this too FWIW.
Stop overconditioning. If you have hair like mine (low porosity 2C-3A), you don't need a rinse out and leave in conditioner. Just pick one.
OK, so I do my 'everything toothbrush' on the same days I wash my hair (twice a week) in the evening, but you can totally do this every time if you want, I'm just unmotivated. For me, this means:
1. Oil pulling for 10 minutes
2. Brushing my teeth with fluoride (I like the Tom's cinnamon one)
3. Scraping my tongue
4. Water flossing
5. Hydrogen peroxide as a mouthwash (I'm allergic to mint)
When water flossing, use a mouthwash instead of water (or, in my case, adding a little hydrogen peroxide to it) for extra clean teeth.
Brush your teeth before eating breakfast. I didn't grow up with this so it's taking some getting used to.
When using fluoride toothpaste, leave it on for a bit after brushing.
Double cleansing with oil based and water based cleansers even when you don't wear makeup, especially in the evening. Really make sure to get all the sunscreen off.
Adding castor oil to moisturiser.
Using castor oil under the eyes daily gets rid of dark circles.
Hypochlorous acid spray instead of cleansing in the morning (for all us executive dysfunction havers), and spraying it throughout the day to keep your face clean.
If you get really red, painful skin after eating certain foods, it could be a fungal thing. My dad had that for years and it's gone now because he uses an antifungal.
Dry brushing before getting in the shower. I lied when I said this is recent I've been hearing about this for years but it's important enough that I'm putting it here.
Wash your body after you've washed your hair. I like to do my whole hair routine and put it up in a T shirt, then go back into the shower to wash my face and body.
Double cleanse your body, first with a bar of soap, then with a body wash. Oh, also wash your legs and feet properly.
When you get out of the shower, thoroughly dry your armpits, between your toes, your privates, and your crack. The rest of your body, leave damp for your lotion.
Put on lotion before body oil. Oil traps in whatever's underneath, so if you put oil first, you're wasting lotion.
Glycolic acid kills the bacteria under your arms that cause odour. I don't even need to use deodorant anymore because there's just no smell.
If you still smell, try using a benzoyl peroxide cream as a mask, leave it on for 5 minutes then wash it off.
Places to spray perfumes: inner forearms near the elbow (putting it on your wrists means it'll rub off faster), middle of the chest/collarbones.
Use! A! Bidet! After! You! Poop! If there's no built in one where you are, they have portable ones for like $30 on Amazon.
Apparently, wiping from front to back means the direction you're wiping? And not just to do your vulva first? It kinda hurts for me to do that but I don't want poop particles up around there so.
Disinfect your phone and headphones once a week. I know you don't do that already. Dirty phones and headphones cause acne and also it's just gross.
Take your underwear off at night. Wear boxers or pyjama shorts or something if you want, but nothing too tight.
Not really a hygiene tip but waxing your eyebrows and dyeing them every couple of weeks means you never have to fill them in again. Same goes with dyeing your eyelashes and mascara.
