Pamper Your Hands

Pamper your hands with a home manicure

Hands constantly get a great deal of mistreatment. For most busy moms, hands are in and out of water, cleaning up after spills, cuts and bumps, etc, or they are using cleaning products to try to keep the bacteria level in the house down to an acceptable level! As a result they are often overused and under cared for, and are not often pampered with a manicure.

 Items needed for a manicure:

* Bowl with warm soapy water

* scrub lotion

* petroleum jelly or any other moisturizing lotion

* cuticle pusher

* Favorite nail polish and clear polish

* Nail polish remover (if your nails have color)

* clean white towel

Simple steps – in case you don’t know!

* Remove jewelry

* Remove old nail polish

* First trim or shape nails.

* Soak both hands in warm soapy water for 3 to 5 minutes. For most moms, sitting with your hands in a bowl of soapy water for 5 minutes isn’t an option, so if this is the case, then may be you could wash some dishes at this stage, or hand wash some of your finer garments

* Push cuticles back gently with towel or cuticle pusher ” stick”.

* Rub hands with a homemade scrub or any other scrub lotion to exfoliate skin.

* Apply petroleum jelly or any other moisturizing lotion on hands. Cover with gloves and leave on for about 5 minutes. Again, although it would do you good to sit for 5 minutes, this may not be an option, so while your hands are gloved, see what other jobs you can get done, a quick dust around, reading a story to your children, etc. There are lots of possibilities, and as a mom you are used to multi-tasking!

* Paint nails. Make sure to apply at least two coats of nail polish and a top coat of clear nail polish to give it more shine. Give it enough time to dry.

Of course, having given yourself a good manicure, you might want to consider using gloves to protect your hands while you do some of your housework or gardening. They will reduce some of the damage to your hands. And whenever you can, sit down and enjoy a manicure – you and your hands deserve it!