10 Beauty Hacks I wish I knew Way sooner (for better beauty habits)

In my opinion, good beauty habits are never about perfection, but they're about consistency. And remaining consistent with our beauty habits really means that we need to have systems in place that make whatever the beauty habit is very easy to do. So in today's video, I'm going to be sharing with you 10 beauty hacks to make your beauty habits much more feasible, much more easy. If you're someone that struggles to do the nightly skincare routine, wash your makeup brushes, I have a bunch of different hacks and tips for you guys. So she is also very kindly sponsoring a portion of the video. We'll get into that later. Let's talk about SPF. So we all know that one of the most important beauty habits is to wear SPF every day. But oftentimes it can be really difficult to either remember to take the extra step. My best beauty hack for this is kind of twofold. Number one, it's to actually find a formula that you absolutely love and is not a chore to put on. It feels comforting. It gives you something more than just SPF coverage. It can give you a moisturized look. It can give you a freshness. Maybe it'll mattify your skin. All of these things are so important. It will help you start to prioritize that step and look forward to it. I actually have a huge SPF video coming just next week, so make sure you subscribe for that. Talking about a ton of SPFs that I absolutely love. My second tip for you all is to keep your SPF by the door. Listen, I am someone that keeps SPF in my makeup bag. I keep it in my actual medicine cabinet when I'm doing my skincare. But oftentimes I find that there is that instant where if I see the sunscreen at the door when I'm about to go on a walk, when I'm about to head to the store, that is when I will take a minute and put it on, especially on the days when I'm having just like a very relaxing time at home. I happen to be going out. Those are the days where I most often skip SPF. If I'm putting on makeup, this is already in my makeup bag, I'm probably going to be putting it on. But those days where I'm not really wearing makeup, I'm not doing a 10-step skincare routine, I'm just relaxing at home, that's when I'll often skip SPF. But if it's right by the door, I am way more likely to put it on. So if you can find an affordable sunscreen, again, check out my upcoming video. I think it's really helpful to have two sunscreens, one in your makeup bag or wherever your skincare is, and then one right at the door. It really has become kind of a game changer for me. Next, let's talk about cleaning your makeup brushes. I don't know if you are like me, I do not look forward to cleaning my makeup brushes. It's not a task that I'm into really at all. Something that will make your life a lot easier and make the washing of your makeup brushes something that doesn't feel like a whole process is actually including this maintenance to your makeup brushes within your quote, everything shower. Now if you don't know what an everything shower is, it's essentially like the idea of the shower where you do like a hair mask, you might shave your legs, you do like a special, a longer kind of shower to do some general maintenance. This is actually a really good time to take one of these kind of silicone sponge mats. By the way, this one is from Sigma. It has different areas for different kinds of brushes. So you're really not going to get too gentle or too harsh of a clean for your different makeup brush styles. So you're going to take this, you're going to stick it on the wall of your shower. Really you can just take a little bit of Dawn dish soap onto the brushes, get them a little bit wet and then and cleanse the brushes in the shower. Now if you have a similar bathroom layout to me, I actually like to kind of put a bit of a towel into my sink and then let my brushes sit and dry there. Now you don't want to completely like submerge your brush into water. That's why I think doing it in the shower is kind of ideal because the shower isn't going to completely saturate inside of the brush, which can eventually make the brush break down. You can even just take a little bit of soap into your hand, gently cleanse the brush in your hand and then set it into the sink on a flat towel to dry. Sigma also makes, I think that this is really cool. I haven't tried it out yet, but it's their Sig Magic Scrub. They have like a scrubber with soap already pressed into it and this also has a suction cup so you can stick this potentially like right next to your scrubber. Put the brush into the soap, then scrub it a little bit with the silicone mat, rinse it with the shower and it's just like much, I don't know what it is. It's much easier and I don't know if you're like me. Sometimes I am like struggling to find things to do when I'm waiting for like a hair mask that takes 10 minutes. I'm just sitting there like, what like, what am I going to do? This is actually a really good way to use that time. Okay, next let's talk about mascara. So I know a lot of us don't throw out our mascara necessarily when we are supposed to. Now listen, I am in that camp. I definitely keep some mascaras much longer than I should, but I got to tell you, I have been the victim of using an expired mascara and then getting like sty, something, you know, goes wrong. So the typical time that a mascara will expire is about three months. So it is one of those makeup products that expires the quickest out of our makeup bags. A good rule of thumb is to actually swap out your mascara with the changing of the season. So if you know that you have been using a mascara all winter or getting into spring, it's probably time to switch out your mascara. Listen, I know I don't like it either. I don't like that they expire so quickly, but it is our eyes. We have to be very caring to them. You only get one pair of eyes. So making sure that we're taking care of our eyes is a lot easier when the spring comes around. We're like, oh, it's probably a good idea to change my mascara. Takes a lot of the guesswork out of like, when did I have this? Has it been three months? When you're changing with the season, it can be a lot easier to remember that kind of thing. At least it has been for me. Okay, hack number four might seem a little bit odd to you guys, but I think it's really important. If you are acne prone, you know that, oh God, my flash is on. You know that a big culprit for acne, especially like on the cheek area, are our phones. When we are putting our phone up to our face, our phones are just, they're so dirty. I mean, you can go ahead and look at any of the research. I do myself a favor and I don't go down that rabbit hole. But I know that our phones get very, very dirty. If you have been a victim of the acne from your phone, obviously we should be disinfecting our phone. But for me, it's not something that I necessarily think about or have a full routine for. However, if you go ahead and buy, or you know, honestly, a lot of us have these already in like our medicine cabinet and our first aid kit. If you buy little alcohol prep pads and you put them into your makeup bag, whenever I see one, I think, oh, I'm here. I might as well clean my phone. I give my phone a wipe down and your face will thank you. I promise. Also, I use these as well for my eyelash curlers. So eyelash curlers get really gross really quickly. So keeping these in my makeup bag, typically I will go ahead and do my eyelash curler, go ahead and disinfect my phone. And it's just one of those beauty habits that keeps everything a little bit more clean. For number six, I wanted to give you guys my little hack of keeping my body moisturized as someone that really cannot be bothered to have a full like body care routine as far as like moisturizers go. It really has to be super easy for me to do this in order for me to get it done. It's just the kind of person that I am. I'll spend like 40 minutes on my makeup, but I can't be bothered to take a minute and moisturize my body. But there are ways of making it really simple and actually more effective. So I'm going to talk about another product from this line in a second when we talk about the hands. But this is the Urea body milk from Shiseido. I really don't like the feeling of really greasy moisturizer all over me. So I feel like a body milk in and of itself is a hack. It is a very, very thin lotion. This actually has Urea in it. Urea is a game changer for dry skin because it actually does a really good job of softening and essentially like exfoliating the skin. You are going to put this in your shower. So the minute that the faucet goes off, take a little bit of your body milk into your hands and then do a really quick moisturize on the legs, on the arms. And it is for me way easier to keep up with. And secondly, having a layer of water, like a light layer of water on the skin itself, your moisturizer really locks it in and it really helps to like deeply hydrate the skin. You know, that's why we say to apply skincare to a slightly damp face rather than a dry face. Your skin becomes more ready to receive the actual moisturizing ingredients. That's why they also say, like, don't put tretinoin on a wet face because the tretinoin is more likely to deeply penetrate. But on the plus side, if you do it with a moisturizer, really help the moisturizer get into the skin and do the healing. I highly recommend this body milk from Shiseido for just its texture overall, or even the Credo body serum. That's the one that is in my shower right now. That's like, it's a very thin kind of texture. It doesn't leave a lot of residue, so it just makes for a more pleasurable experience, at least for me and like that feeling that I like on my skin. I'm very particular with texture for body cream. So if you're like me, there's a good chance I think you might like those. But let's go ahead and talk about our hands. So I have mentioned this before, I think specifically in some of the K-beauty, Japanese beauty videos that I've done before. And it's about the routine of like keeping our hands moisturized. If you are like me, you wash your hands a lot. It is just one of those things. My hands get dry so, so quickly. It does feel like if I miss even a single day of putting something on my hands, we're like we're in dry, dry, dry territory. It really does not take a lot of time for my hands to get to a very dry place. People say this all the time, but it sincerely makes such a huge difference. When you are doing your skincare routine, if you have any excess on your hands whatsoever, you are taking that down the neck, onto the chest, and onto the backs of your hands. Also, our hands are exposed to the sun quite often, so there's a good chance that they could use a little vitamin C. You know what I mean? They could use a little moisture oftentimes. So while you're doing your skincare routine, just keep that in mind to take it all the way down the neck, onto the chest, I mean really this skin right here on our chest and neck. Alright, I'm going to turn off Antique Roadshow because I forgot to tell you guys something. I was sitting editing and then I realized that I forgot to tell you guys a very crucial part of this, which is when I am taking whatever the excess skincare is on my face down to the neck and the chest, TMI or not, it's true, I am almost always naked or I have like a robe on. Do your, a game changer is do your skincare naked. Your chest, or at least without a shirt on, your chest will be so much easier to get to when you have like, if I had this shirt on, you really think that I'm going to like pull the shirt down and then put anything on my chest? No, I'm not going to do that. So you just have to, again, a lot of this video is about making these habits as easy as possible. So the next time that you are doing your skincare routine, I know a lot of people already do this, but worth noting, a robe that, um, again, like really exposes your chest or you can like move it really easily. I wear one all the time or just do it naked. It is the same kind of skin on our face and on our neck and chest. So you really need to kind of take care of the decollete, but also going ahead and just making it a habit when you're doing it, take it down the neck onto the chest and at the very last second, take it onto the backs of your hands. And for me personally, I noticed a difference when I happened to have been doing that. But if for whatever reason you feel like your hands just need some TLC, you often forget to put on hand cream. I know a lot of people say like, make sure you have hand cream right next to the sink when you go ahead and wash your hands. And I gotta be honest, like I do enjoy doing that. I've done that for a long time, but what I have noticed actually makes the biggest difference for me. And we'll get into a couple of these like little hacks. For me, it's all about placing these little Easter eggs throughout my house or throughout my routine and just cause as least friction as possible throughout the routine. I keep hand cream right next to my couch because without fail, I feel like from like eight o'clock to 10 o'clock, I am probably sitting on my couch and I am probably sitting there. And then that's when I'll notice that my hands are feeling a little bit dry. So I actually get way more use out of my hand cream when it's on the couch than literally any other place that I put it in my house. And again, the Shiseido one, the Urea 10% hand cream is very good if you do need a bit of exfoliation to the hands, but you don't want something super, super rich. However, if you do want something rich, like your hands are really, really struggling, the Sikaplast hand cream from La Roche-Posay. This is almost like slugging your hands. I actually keep this hand cream in my nightstand because I don't like the way it feels in my hands, but I love the result. So I'll go ahead and take this, put it into my nightstand, and then I just lather, smother my hands in it right before I go to bed. And then I wake up and my hands have repaired. These are my two top picks as far as hand creams. They're both pretty affordable, all things considered. This is the one that I have by my couch right now, the Philosophy In Good Hands as well. I do really like this one. They also have a scented version of this. So if you do like a scented version, they have their fresh cream scent. But this is slightly more lightweight as well. So it's not going to be like that really intense kind of moisturizer. It feels kind of like medium weight. So these are kind of the three that I would go ahead and recommend. I'm going to leave all of the products that I talk about today down below for you guys in case we just keep running through them and you forget. Okay, my next hack for you is for any of you that do like exercising throughout the day. Maybe you go to the gym, you have to go straight from the gym to work or you go on like a hike but you need to like run some errands after. There are plenty of reasons why we might not be able to take a shower right after doing a little bit of lifting and sweating. Some of us are just sweaty. It's very natural. I cannot sing the praises of hypochlorous acid enough. This stuff is truly, truly magic and it's really changed the game for me since I started using it. So this is the one from Tara 20, the Daily Rescue Facial Spray. They also have though their Intensive Rescue Serum. So they have a different kind of texture depending on what you're going for. This spray is really good because you can mist it over your face, onto your chest, onto your back very easily. But if you're someone that wants to kind of do like more of a targeted kind of area, this one I think works really well. I'll tell you guys how I use this one in a second. Hypochlorous acid immediately kills acne-causing bacteria. So if you are someone that deals with like bacne, for example, from working out, for me, I find that I'm way more prone to it misting this on your back or on any of these areas where you would typically break out, you know, especially going into the summer months, just like walking from your car to the grocery store. I feel like sometimes I'm breaking a sweat, you know what I mean? Keeping something like this on hand to keep the skin clean is like, like I said, it's a total game changer. It also kills bacteria that can cause eczema flare-ups. So that's why this is accepted by the National Eczema Association. So again, if you have more sensitive eczema-prone skin, if you have acne-prone skin, really I think anyone could use this and see a nice benefit from it. But let me share with you guys how I actually use the Intensive Rescue Serum. So I use this actually to shave my face. I've talked about this before on my channel. So typically what I'll do is make sure that my little electric razor is completely clean. You can use like just an alcohol wipe. This is actually, I'm pretty sure, water-resistant or waterproof. You could just wash it. But I typically will coat the entirety of my razor and my face in the Hypochlorous Serum and it actually gives my skin a little bit of glide and then I'll take care of any stray hairs that I have on my face. If you're someone that tends to break out no matter what you do when you shave your face, like I am, like for me it has been a struggle for years. The only thing that has helped, literally the only thing, has been using a gentle electric razor. But even sometimes it would still break out with using a razor like this. What actually was the game-changer was using a hypochlorous acid routine. So I'm telling you, if you're someone that struggles with that, highly, highly, highly recommend using a hypochlorous acid. Again, great for any like body acne, body breakouts like eczema breakouts. So my next tip for you all is coming from someone that is so low maintenance when it comes to her nails. I actually have decent nails and it's because, you know, I don't really do a ton to them. I'm not really taking a toll on them. But I also think that part of the reason I have good nails is because I am actually using a sheer nail polish most often. So if you're trying to get in the habit of having like a nice looking nail, something that looks natural, it looks polished, but you want the literal least amount of time put into your actual nail routine, the nail routine for me is hand cream, again we've already talked about it, and a sheer nail polish. This is the Dior Nail Glow. This has been a holy grail of mine for literally years. The minute that I heard about this product, someone described it as a French manicure in a bottle and I was like, oh, done. I am buying that. And I never stopped buying it. It's, this is actually my second one and I actually need, I actually need to buy another one because I accidentally, I just wanted to put a little acetone in there to get it going again. And it had dried out a little bit because this is my older one and I can't find my newer one for the life of me. And I put way too much in. So now it's really runny. It just, I changed the formula on accident. I'll show you guys some closeups and I am wearing Dior Nail Glow at least once a month, you know what I mean? But it just offers this really sheer kind of glossy effect to the nails and they get the color really bright in my opinion because the color has this kind of whitening effect to the tips of the nails. Whereas some nail polishes say they're the kind of Dior Nail Glow dupe, if you will, but really they're just pink and pink doesn't necessarily cancel out any of like the natural yellowness that might happen in our nails. This has a little bit of like a brightening lavender note to it that makes it just makes your nails pop. It makes them look so healthy. It again, does give you that fresh like French manicure kind of vibe, but the reason this is kind of a hack to me is that the reason I don't like to apply nail polish or even go get my nails done sometimes is that when they start to chip, it drives me absolutely insane. This, when it starts chipping, you can barely notice. So I can often go like an entire day with chipped nails. I don't notice. No one else notices because it's already such a sheer color that has very, very little base pigment. It's not even like a milky kind of actual nail polish that could potentially show up just like kind of the next step up from a clear kind of polish. But I'm telling you it, it has been a game changer for my nail routine at keeping, you know, having some sort of routine for my nails, keeping them a little bit protected too, especially like in like this winter, I always like to have something on my nails just cause I'm washing my hands so much that having something like this does help to protect them. So highly, highly, highly, highly recommend the Dior nail glow. It's been a game changer for me. Let's talk about another beauty habit that I think a lot of us are trying to get into a routine of, and that is using less makeup product, like only using the amount of makeup that we actually need. No one wants to use more than they need and go through product quicker. And a big tip that I have for you guys is to apply your lipstick first. That might sound kind of crazy, but especially on days where I just want a quick routine, I will take like my go-to lipstick. This is the Soshi Ceramide Lip Silk, by the way, they are sponsoring this little portion of the video. But my hack for you guys is to take your lipstick on and then what you'll notice is when you look in the mirror, when you get that lip color on, you'll start to notice any of the discoloration and you only have to really concentrate the pigment in those areas. If we're applying our lipstick first, you start to notice the parts of the face where you really actually don't need much coverage at all. So by the way, I applied the Ceramide Lip Silk in the shade Speakeasy, it's like my holy grail shade, my holy grail everyday kind of lipstick formula because it's very sheer, has a really nice glide, it's moisturizing, and it just doesn't feel like a heavy lipstick. It feels very buildable and almost balm-like. When I apply it, I notice that around my nose and my mouth is where I have the most pigmentation. Whereas like on my forehead and on the sides of my face, I don't really need much actual coverage there. So had I not done that, there's a good chance that I actually would have like over-applied the coverage where I didn't necessarily need it. And you can see when I just correct those areas how basically my entire face looks a lot more even. If you do tend to over-apply your coverage, I often find that that little hack will really be able to get you into a habit of actually noticing where the true pigmentation is. And then at the very end of my routine, I'll go ahead and with just like a lip liner. So I use the So She Lip Liner in the shade Speakeasy. This is like slightly more brown, but I find that it gives my lips like a really nice frame. Let me know if you guys end up trying that hack especially because I think it's a really good one. And last but not least, we know that we need to be protecting our hair. In fact, I recently went to the hairdresser and we talked about how my ends have not been doing quite as well as they usually are. I think that's for a few different reasons, but I think one big reason is skipping actually brushing my hair at the end of the night. But another big reason is not using like a silk pillowcase or a protective style. Now it's nice to do both. I at this time don't have a silk pillowcase or like a satin pillowcase. It is something that's on my radar right now. But at least doing a protective hairstyle before you go to bed is kind of a game changer. So I'm going to show you guys the one that I do. It's really nice if you are like a side sleeper. A very basic one would be like a braid, but if you have a certain style and you think that the braid could crimp, obviously that's just something to keep in mind. I don't think that that's necessarily going to be the go-to, but I actually learned this kind of protective style from Abby Young. She's a creator here on YouTube. You are going to take all of your hair and you're going to kind of, you're going to lean your head forward and pull up all of your hair to the top. Now this is going to look a bit different because you're going to brush your hair first, but you're going to, oh my good God, you're going to pull all your hair up to the top of your head and then you're going to slowly make a little bun on the top of your head and it's going to be really loose. You see how my hair isn't really strained? That's really important. Again, complete credit to Abby because she's the one that taught me this. Then you're going to take a little hair clip. I like to just use two smaller hair clips that are, you know, relatively comfortable. A smaller one was probably a better idea to do with this, but you're just going to fasten the bun up on the top of your head, but again, you want to make sure that this is, it's loose. It's secured, but it's still really loose, but all of the ends of my hair are up and secured so that when I'm sleeping, I'm not kind of mashing the ends of my hair into the pillow. And I will say that this style, when you kind of keep it in this twirl and this bun, I find that it kind of maintains my hairstyle longer. I mean, I probably could have done this a little bit better, but you guys get the idea. Again, you're just going to take the hair straight up, you're going to make that swirly little bun and you're going to really loosely fasten it, if you will, on the top of your head. That's just going to keep your hair more protected, and then also, you're not going to have to deal with a bunch of crimping that potentially a braid might give you. But again, a silk bonnet would work, a silk pillowcase, and that is something that you buy, you put on your pillow, and then there's very little that you have to do after that. That actually could be an even better option for some of you that just don't even want to think about it. And those were all of my beauty hacks for beauty habits. I really hope that you guys did enjoy today's video. If there are specific beauty habits that you're trying to incorporate into your routine, again, remember that it is way more about consistency than perfection. Again, it's not about having the most perfect routine every single day, it's just about making certain habits way more easy to do and actually follow through with. So I hope that you guys enjoyed it. Make sure you subscribe for my upcoming SPF video, especially if you want to know all of my favorites, and I will see you guys in my next one.