Hand washing is a habit nobody counts. Most people can say how many times a day they brush their teeth; almost no one can say how many times they washed their hands today. The hand goes to the tap without thought, rinses the foam without thought, dries without thought, many times over.
For the skin of the hands, that lack of counting is the problem. Each wash takes a matter of seconds, but added together they mean the hands spend a considerable part of the day either wet or in the process of drying out. In thinking about dry hands, knowing how often you wash comes before deciding what to apply.
This article begins by counting a day's washes, looks at what each one takes from the skin, then considers the option of not washing and the tools that make each remaining wash lighter on the hands.
Count a single day
Try it for one day. On waking, with the face. After the bathroom. Before and after making breakfast. At the entrance to the office, the sanitiser. Before lunch. The bathroom again in the afternoon. At the front door on coming home. While cooking supper, each time raw meat or fish is handled. After the washing up. In the bath. Before bed.
Counted this way, more than ten is nothing unusual, and in a household with small children, or in a job that involves cooking or serving, twenty or thirty is within reach. Add the sanitiser and the number climbs further. At a minute a time, that is twenty or thirty minutes a day the hands spend in water and soap.
The counting itself is useful. Once the number is visible, you can begin to ask of each wash whether it is really needed, and whether there will be time afterwards to moisturise. The quality of each individual wash becomes something you can think about.
Notice, as you count, how few of these washes are followed by anything. The hands are dried, or shaken, and the next thing is picked up. If the number of washes is ten or twenty, the number of times the hands are moisturised afterwards is often one or two, usually at night. The gap between those two figures is where dry hands come from.
What each wash removes
On the surface of the skin lies a thin film of sebum that holds water in the outer layer. Frequent washing removes this sebum along with the dirt, and the moisture barrier is easily broken. The tightness felt straight after washing is the signal that the film has thinned.
Hot water speeds the loss of sebum; a soap that cleans too aggressively takes away sebum the skin needs. Soap left on the skin is itself a cause of roughness, and a towel rubbed across the hands adds friction. And the longer the hands are left with nothing on them after washing, the more water escapes from the outer layer into the air.
One reason the hands dry out and show age sooner than the face is that they are washed so much more often. No one washes their face twenty times a day; for the hands, that is ordinary. The technique of washing without roughening the skin is covered in washing the hands without roughness; here we stay with the question of frequency.
The option of not washing
Washing less often does not mean letting hygiene slip. When there is no visible dirt on the hands, using a sanitiser that contains moisturising ingredients is considered less likely to cause chapping than repeated washing with soap and running water, precisely because frequent washing strips sebum.
In other words, a day's washes can be sorted into those that are needed, after soil, grease or raw food, and those performed out of habit that a sanitiser would cover. For anyone whose skin is irritated by alcohol, alcohol-free sanitisers are an option. In either case, make moisturising after the hands dry a habit.
Naturally, the washes that matter, before and after cooking, on arriving home, should still be done. What is cut is not the number for its own sake but the wash that serves no purpose.
This is not a licence to skip the basin. It is a way of matching the method to the moment. Soil, grease and raw food call for soap and water; a door handle or a lift button, when the hands are otherwise clean, may call for nothing more than a moisturising sanitiser. Sorting the day's occasions in this way often removes several washes without removing any cleanliness.
Two tools that make each wash lighter
Even after the count is trimmed, washes remain. The next step is to make each one cost the hands less. There are two tools.
The first is a soap that leaves moisture behind with every wash. If each wash strips the sebum film, a moisturising formula that keeps moisture in during and after washing limits the tightness that follows. The more often you wash, the more the choice of soap decides the state of the skin.
The second is a serum applied straight after washing. In the few seconds after drying, while the hands are still soft, take one or two pearl-sized drops on the back of the hand, bring the hands together to spread it, and work it in between the fingers and around the nails. A texture that leaves no stickiness can be used after every wash without getting in the way of work. Settle on a place for the bottle, one by the basin and one on the desk, and washing and moisturising become a single movement. A 30 mL bottle in the bag covers the washes that happen away from both.
Lukewarm water, a thorough rinse, and a towel pressed rather than rubbed. Keep to these three, and what a single wash takes from the hands shrinks further still.
Soie's habit
The habit at the heart of Soie's hand beauty is to make washing and moisturising one act. Moist Fragrance Hand & Body Soap is formulated with moisturising ingredients such as glycerin and aloe vera leaf juice and designed to leave moisture behind with every wash. Afterwards, Enlight Hand Serum, a beauty serum made only for the hands, goes from the back of the hand to the fingertips and around the nails. It leaves no stickiness, so it can be used as many times a day as the hands are washed.
Count the washes, question the ones that serve no purpose, and lighten the ones that remain. Washing often and keeping the hands moist are not mutually exclusive. Begin, today, by counting.
