In today’s reader mail:
"Dear BS,
My hands get really gross and dry and I can’t stop picking at them. I hate most hand lotions; they’re usually really perfumed or thin or just gross. Any ideas?
Love,
B."
Oh B. How we feel your pain. Our hands look nice the second we walk out of the manicurists, and then it is a bad, steep downward spiral from there. We also hate lotion because we will always lotion up our hands, and then touch our glasses. Do you know how hard it is to get hand lotion off glasses?
Anyway. Our two favorites are at opposite ends of the spectrum. We currently have a tube of L’Occitane’s Hand Cream sitting on our desk. We have had this particular tube for a couple years, and it’s still going strong! We just applied it so we could best talk about it. It is a bit wet feeling, but not terribly slimy. We still have control of our digits. The scent is noticeable, but it’s not awful. It smells a bit like babies, we think. We do not actually know any babies, but we would hope this is how they smell. However, at $25 a tube, this is a bit rich for our blood. Some people swear by it, though.
Our actual favorite hand cream is in our car, where it is probably 110 degrees right now. We love Vaseline’s Intensive Rescue Healing Hand Cream. It never, ever feels greasy. It doesn’t smell like anything we can put our fingers on. The only thing we don’t love is the packaging, but for something like $4, we’ll deal with that.
Vaseline Intensive Rescue Healing Hand Cream, $3.99
-LIL BUNNY
this may be secondary to the topic, but I am always buying new face creams with the anti-aging flavor of the month in them, and then, as I have very sensitve skin, they wind up eating my face off. Figuratively speaking. So my favorite hand creams are usually my discarded face lotions, which I can’t use up but can’t bear to throw away. I tell myself my hands look younger, too.
The L’Occitane hand cream is AMAZING. thick but rubs in well, not a strong scent – something gentle like baby powder or oatmeal but is really neither and makes your skin incredible soft. every once in awhile i will buy the $10 to put in my purse but when it runs out i put take my time buying the next one because it is a little bit much for the pocketbook.
oh wow…i also have very dry hands (especially in utah) and by far my favorite hand cream is Aveda’s Hand Relief. it smells nice, although, it is a little greasy. and i know, lately, BS has been knocking Aveda products, but this is one that i cannot live without.
http://www.aveda.com/templates/products2/spp.tmpl?CATEGORY_ID=CATEGORY9683&PRODUCT_ID=PROD5908
To further the Kiehls fandom: I love their Ultimate Strength Hand Salve (especially during Chicago winters). It has a very subtle eucalyptus scent and is not greasy whatsoever. I am also devoted to Weleda’s Skin Food, though I avoid using it at work since it is a little greasy going on. It has rosemary, sweet orange and lavender oils and smells amazing in a non-perfume way.
i swear by neutrogena’s norwegian formula hand cream. it takes less than a pea-sized amount to thoroughly moisturize hands, smells fresh and powdery without being cloying, and never leaves hands greasy. AND it’s only $4. totally worth a try.
http://www.drugstore.com/products/prod.asp?pid=17009&catid=10401
I have really sensitive skin on my hands and Nevada is also super dry. I used to use whatever was on hand, I liked stuff that smelled good and people always gave me free stuff that they had that smelled nice. And my hands were always raw. Finally I sucked it up and said “I don’t care what it smells like but it needs to absolutely not irritate my skin in any way and also satisfactorily hydrate” and now I suck it up and buy Lubriderm even though it’s pricey (in my drugstore shopping world). My hands are better than they have been in a long time. A lot of the hyped natural oils and stuff that I so dearly love is really irritating and this is just the mildest moisturizer I have been able to find.
I love Crabtree & Evelyn’s 60 second fix. It includes a hand-specific exfoliator and a rapidly absorbed cream to be used afterwards. I think there is a choice of a few different (and not overpowering) scents you should find one that isn’t too offensive!
I, on the other hand, returned the L’Occitane hand cream because I couldn’t stand the scent – I kept smelling it all day and had to wash it off my hands. The woman in the L’Occitane store told me it was unscented…I don’t think so! To me, it was very strong…
well, the people at l’occitane say the shea butter hand cream is their no. 1 bestseller. unscented! oh my, no way