The overnight hand mask
On a small thing I started doing two winters ago — a generous balm and cotton gloves before bed — and how it has changed what the hands look like at forty-six.
I have always had dry hands. Not catastrophically dry, but persistently — through the winters especially, when the cold air outside and the dry heat inside conspire to take the moisture out faster than any hand cream can replace it. By December, in most years, my knuckles would be reddish and slightly cracked. By February, the skin between my fingers would look ten years older than the skin on my arms.
Two winters ago I started doing a small overnight treatment. About a teaspoon of a thick balm — anything heavy, lanolin-based or shea-based, doesn't matter much — massaged thoroughly into the hands before bed, and then a pair of soft cotton gloves worn through the night. The gloves keep the balm in contact with the skin instead of having it absorb into the sheets, and the hands wake up genuinely soft for the first time in their adult life.
How often this needs to happen
Less often than you would think. I do it twice a week through the winter, once a week through the autumn and spring, almost never in the summer. The cumulative effect, even at this low frequency, is significant. The knuckles do not crack. The cuticles do not split. The skin between the fingers stays supple. The hands, at forty-six, look about thirty-eight.
On the gloves
Soft cotton is the right material. Plain white from a small pharmacy, about eight euros a pair, washable. I have three pairs that I rotate through. They are not glamorous. They make me look, in the moment of putting them on, like someone who has decided to age according to a particular plan. My partner, who finds this funny, has stopped commenting.
The first night with the gloves is strange — the hands feel constrained in a way that takes some getting used to. By the third or fourth time, the brain has stopped registering them. I sleep through the night with the gloves on and do not notice them until the alarm.
What the morning is like
Take the gloves off. The hands are slightly slippery with leftover balm, which absorbs within a few minutes. The cuticles are soft. The knuckles are smooth. The whole hand has the quality that a hand has after a long day at the beach in warm water, except it is February and the radiator has been on all night.
This is, by any sensible measure, an extraordinarily cheap intervention. A jar of decent balm costs perhaps fifteen euros and lasts the entire winter. The cotton gloves cost eight euros. The total annual cost of having forty-six-year-old hands that look thirty-eight is approximately twenty-five euros, and it is the best beauty investment I make, by a considerable margin.