Winter is coming, weather outside is getting colder and air inside is getting drier. So I thought this would be the perfect time to tell you how take care of my hands and the products I use. This is going to be a three part post and I’ll start it off with hand wash and exfoliation.

My skin is quite sensitive and dries up very easily. During summer I can slack off and not moisturize my hands daily. When winter arrives it’s a whole another story. I have to be almost religious about moisturizing. If I’m not the skin on my hands will have bleeding cracks on knuckles and cuticles. Very painful and looks horrible too. I have two little kids, two dogs and I spend a lot of time at horse stables. I wash my hands a lot and they have to go through plenty of things during an average day. So on this three part post I show you some of my old favorites and some new to me products too to help me keep my hands soft and smooth. Some of these products might not be available internationally but I bet you can find similar products all over the world

 

I will start with hand soaps. I’ve noticed that regular soaps make my hands very dry and make my cuticles crack. So I’ve turned to more natural soaps. One of my favorites for every day use is Urtekram Brown Sugar hand soap. It dries my hands a lot less and my cuticles don’t crack using this soap. It washes my hands clean and the scent is very mild. This is the one soap I keep buying all the time.

 

Photo from urtekram.com

 

As a new to me product I got to test LUSH Sultana of Soap bar soap that was recommended to me by the lovely ladies at LUSH Finland. This one is perfect for my dry hands. The lather feels so creamy and this leaves your hands feeling very nice after the wash. The dry, tight feeling I usually have on my skin after a wash is gone and the scent is absolutely lovely. The scent is quite strong and stays on your skin for some time. I’m very sensitive to some soap scents but this didn’t seem to be one of them. I tested this a couple of times at nights too so that I washed my hands with this right before going to bed. I sleep with my hands close to my face and I got no reaction at all even if I could smell the scent pretty well. You can use this soap on your whole body as well as your hands and as a big bonus it makes your bathroom smell oh so lovely!

 

 

I also like to exfoliate my hands regularly to remove the dead dry skin and help moisturizers work. One of my favorites is an organic sugar scrub. I think this is only available in Finland but I bet there’s a lot of similar products available in your area.

 

Photo from here

 

I also got to test LUSH Ocean Salt scrub. This one has quite a soft and smooth, almost creamy texture but it still exfoliates efficiently. Ocean Salt scrub leaves my skin feeling very soft and smooth. I even tested this without using lotion right after scrubbing and there was no tightness or dryness of the skin. This has a very freshening citrus scent that stays on your skin for a bit but doesn’t really smell through after applying the lotions. This is actually a facial scrub and there will be a post of how this works on my face coming up in a near future.

 

 

Here was part one of “How I take care of my hands and cuticles” and I do that by paying attention on the hand soaps I use and choosing the more gentle ones. Also, I don’t forget to get rid of that dead skin and I regularly use scrubs to exfoliate. On part two I will be talking about cuticle care and products I use for that.

 

***LUSH Sultana of Soap and Ocean Salt scrub were sent for review. Other products mentioned on this blog post were purchased by me. I don’t benefit from clicking any of the links on this post.