PSA: Drink More Water!

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Drink more water

Do you drink enough water? I can relate – I don’t. After my doctor told me that I need to scale back my caffeine intake last April (FML), I’ve been trying. While I’ve succeeded in managing my caffeine intake, I am trying to balance things out by being better about drinking water.

Not unlike using a fountain to entice cats to drink, tricking myself to drink more water is a good strategy.

For example, before I drink coffee in the morning, I try to down 16 fl oz of water first. I don’t always succeed, but it sets me up on a good note before I start screwing myself over with diuretic coffee.

I managed to get myself to actually crave water. Just water. (I still adore exciting water. I just have to marvel at actually wanting still water; I thought it was an impossibility for me.)

Why Drink More Water?

You’ll probably feel better if you drink more water – in the same way that regular exercise, once you get past the discomfort of starting anew, will. This and last winter have really started to make me notice the waning resilience of my skin.

I simply don’t retain hydration like I did:

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Ways to Lower Your Beauty Waste

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ways to lower your beauty waste

Ever wonder about how to lower your beauty waste or lower your beauty consumption? Over the years, I’ve challenged myself over the years to make small, practical changes in my habits and consumption. Beauty and personal care aren’t exempted from this endeavor.

Here to Inspire, NOT Preach

I am not and do not aim to be zero waste. I’m also not here to preach at you from astride a white horse. My time is valuable to me, and I am willing to make certain concessions in the name of convenience to preserve some of it. I think there’s a balance to strike – plastic isn’t evil, just like chemicals aren’t evil, but we should produce and consume (let alone recycle or dispose of) far more thoughtfully (read: less) than the average person is today.

If you’re able or willing to go harder than me? That’s great! If you haven’t made changes along these lines but want to, that’s great too – and maybe I can give you some ideas to lower your beauty waste that don’t feel like such a sacrifice that you can’t achieve them. After all, goals that aren’t achievable aren’t smart.

Just because you aren’t going full-tilt doesn’t mean what you CAN do doesn’t make a difference.

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Toning my Highlights with WELLA Color Charm Demi Permanent Hair Color

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Toning my Highlights with WELLA Color Charm Demi Permanent Hair Color

I haven’t found the courage to color my own hair altogether. I am, however, brave enough to undertake smaller, lower-risk color-adjacent jobs myself. Like glossing, toning my highlights is a perfect example of a low-risk, usually professional procedure I’m willing to undertake myself.

Until last July, I hadn’t explored, “proper,” toners or heard of Wella Color Charm Demi Permanent Hair Color. I’m risk averse, so I had been employing purple toning shampoo to tone down brass with this method.

About five months after my last balayage appointment, I decided to take a stab at toning my highlights properly. After several hours of research, I decided to try toning my highlights with the Wella Color Charm Demi Permanent Hair Color line.

Note: I am not a licensed hair professional; I have not gone to beauty school! I’m a STEM professional and like reading and learning for fun. Although I feel comfortable making these decisions for myself, I recommend you do your homework before taking the plunge into DIY chemical treatments.

Fortunately, Wella Color Charm Demi Permanent Hair Color and other Wella products aren’t all pro-only and any ol’ person can buy from Sally Beauty or Amazon.

Selecting the Correct Toner Shade

First, assess your toning goal. My goal was to cool down the brassiness/warmth that my balayage highlights had accumulated over time. Depending on your hair, you might seek something with neutral or cool/ash tones to achieve this goal.

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Lancome Juicy Tubes

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Lancome Juicy Tubes

Luxury brand Lancome isn’t on the forefront of beauty trends, but Lancome Juicy Tubes ($20) glosses endure as a classic and a favorite in the broader community of cosmetics fanciers.

I like the idea of lipgloss, but rarely the execution. As a youngster, I owned a few Wet n Wild tubes (and they still make a shade I used to use and still enjoy!), but never fully embraced them once I started wearing makeup in earnest as an adult. I can cope with the need to reapply often (though I don’t want to), but sticky is unacceptable.

My preferences translate to a relative unwillingness to risk $20 (or even a sale price; at 20% off they’d still be $16) on one. Admittedly, I was curious though: we’re talking about a non trendy/hype machine product with enduring 4.5 star reviews. Could Lancome Juicy Tubes be that good? What would a $20 lip gloss have to do or be in order for you to buy it?

Giving Lancome Juicy Tubes a Shot

There’s no universe in which I spend that much on something that looks like I could’ve gotten it from Claire’s as a child. When I was able to nab a free sample tube, I did.

In (an acronym and) a word:

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Worth it? Tao Clean Sonic Brush Cleaner

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TAO Clean Sonic Makeup Brush Cleaner

Here I am, flirting with danger by reviewing a potentially gimmicky product: the Tao Clean Sonic Brush Cleaner.

How Do You Clean Your Brushes?

You do clean them, don’t you?

Are you a sociopath that enjoys cleaning your brushes? It’s okay, this is a safe space. If you’re like the rest of us, though, there’s a whole subset of the beauty industry targeting the rest of us. There are a whole host of brush cleaning gadgets on the market. Some of them appear to me to be gimmicks, or to be scarcely more efficient than washing individually by hand.

For ages, I ignored them. Like a unitasking kitchen appliance, I wasn’t sold on their value. Furthermore, some seem harsher than doing so by hand. Your tools are an investment: you don’t want to be rough on them by subjecting them to a violently whirring apparatus. Many makeup brush cleaner appliances fall into this category.

Noting my bitching (and negligence), my husband got me the Tao Clean Sonic Brush Cleaner ($ 95) as a birthday gift last year. Thoughtful. Practical. And a good present because I’d never have purchased it for myself at that price point (remember?). But finally, I’m actually keeping my brushes clean at a regular interval.

Tao Clean Sonic Brush Cleaner

So, first things first about the Tao Clean Sonic Brush Cleaner: it isn’t a smol boi. Nearly a foot tall and a touch top-heavy, the appliance comes in two pieces with a detachable A/C power supply. The run time for a single cycle is 2 minutes – in that time, it subtly moves each brush back and forth 50 times a second – or 6000 times.

I don’t know about you, but my manual cleaning (even with this mat) doesn’t result in fifty motions per second.

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Major Hair Loss with TRESemme

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Hair loss with TRESemme

Corporate stupidity, often, is why we can’t have nice things. A lot of people, including me, have experienced hair loss with TRESemme and other shampoos and conditioners in the Unilever family of brands.

Retracing My Steps

Last year, faced with (at last) the end of my Tigi Moisture Maniac stockpile (that I had gleefully found at Costco), I faced the music that the discontinuation was finally final. and decided to return to drugstore options. I’d had decent results with Tresemme in the past, so while the variety I had previously tried wasn’t available, I went for their Moisture Rich shampoo and conditioner.

Hair Loss with TRESemme

We all shed hair, it’s part of the process. But I was shedding a lot. Granted, 2020 was a hell of a year, and we know stress is a contributor to hair loss.

But I’m no stranger to stress, and I was losing hair in fistfuls. I’m not a particularly emotional person, but it brought me to tears. I’d wash and condition my hair in the shower, capturing and coiling the fallen strands on the wall to see the casualties of the day and cry. I’m not even thirty yet. Was I sick? What the hell.

So, given that, it isn’t surprising it took me months to connect the dots that the acceleration of my shedding coincided uncomfortably with the product change.

Unforutnately, I’m Not Alone

When the suspicion occurred to me, I put on my investigative hat and found, to my horror, that Unilever is currently facing a class action suit over hair loss with TRESemme. The litigation is over another product line for containing an ingredient that is known to accelerate hair loss.

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