Frugal Hand Treatment
Posted by: TammyI enjoy being “hands-on” with a variety of projects: gardening, building stone walls, DIY home projects. I also wash my hands a lot with my job as a dental hygienist not to mention how many hours a week I have my hands in wash water in the kitchen. There are days that my hands really show just how much I use them. Once the cold weather starts, my hands tend to get even worse, with my skin cracking along the knuckles if I make a fist.
It’s not enough to just lather on the moisturizer. The outer most layer of your skin is a layer of dead skin cells. If you don’t exfoliate off the dead skin cells regularly, it’s like trying to water your grass with a thick layer of dead leaves on top; the water will sit on top and not penetrate down to the soil.
One of my favorite ways to frugally pamper myself is to do a hand treatment in the evening once I’m ready to settle down for bed. First, I exfoliate my hands with a sugar scrub. I put a teaspoon or so of my favorite liquid soap in the palm of my wet hand with a teaspoon or so of sugar (yep, regular white sugar). All you do is gently begin washing your hands with your nicely scented sugar scrub. I make sure to focus on scrubbing my knuckles and other areas that begin to get dry and sad looking. After thirty or so seconds of scrubbing, I rinse it away with lukewarm water (don’t use hot water as it will dry your skin even more).
I gently pat my hands dry and then massage in a moisturizing cream. Then I slide my hands into a pair of clean tube socks. You can also use a pair of cotton gloves designed for just this purpose, but if you don’t have the gloves, then the socks will do. You’re basically allowing your hands to stay warm and the pores to be open to the moisturizer. Oh and about the moisturizer: don’t spend lots of money! When you exfoliate and use the sock technique, even a cheap moisturizer works well.
In the morning, my hands feel so soft and pampered. This technique also works beautifully for dry, cracked feet! Remember to exfoliate (either with a pumice stone or with the sugar scrub technique) and then moisturize and slide into warm, clean socks. Exfoliating your feet with the sugar scrub allows you to get out dead skin from between the toes, too. This can help with reducing foot smell which is kind of nice when you keep your feet in snow boots all winter! 
Pampering yourself doesn’t have to be pricey which makes it even better! I love feeling like a million bucks for only pennies!