The busy woman's time saving beauty hacks for 2021

You want to look and stay beautiful, but you hardly have the time to go to the salon or dermatologist often. This means your skin and hair care are in your hands – so here are quick hacks to help you out:

#1 Lay out everyday essentials within easy reach.

There are certain products you use daily without fail. These are cleanser, toner, moisturiser, sunscreen lotion and possibly concealer/primer. You might even quickly line your eyes and add a dash of colour to your lips. Instead of putting away all these products in your vanity box, lay them out in a line (in order of use) on your dressing table or bathroom mirror. Ease of access ensures regular use – if you are too rushed for time, you might skip your skin cleansing routine altogether or tell yourself you will “do it tomorrow”. Place a jar of cotton pads next to them.

#2 Make a batch of face pack/hair pack to last a week.

Like most women, you might have a lot of faith in DIY home remedies for clear skin and lustrous hair. It is true that nature provides us with enough bounty to maintain physical and mental fitness via the nutrients we imbibe in our food and drink. But you don’t always have the time to mash fruit and grate vegetables, then mix them with other substances to make a skin or hair mask. So here’s a handy trick: study the proportions of the ingredients you need, then double them so that you get a bigger quantity of the product. You can then store it in the refrigerator and use it for up to a week (depending on products used and their rancidity factor). However, do not use the mask after a week, because it will lose its potency. With time, you can make batches of masks quickly and save yourself a lot of time later.

#3 Keep your dermatologist on speed dial.

You probably know a good dermatologist in Riyadh, or are on the lookout for one. But there isn’t enough time for a lengthy consultation at the clinic. So here’s what you do: put your dermatologist on speed dial and use a phone messaging app to post your queries and photographs/video of the problem for them to look at. A chat can help the doctor understand the extent of the problem. If the doctor feels that they need to study the problem better, you can schedule an appointment at your convenience.

#4 Make a fruit-vegetable smoothie instead of tinkering around with prepping a salad.      

You and your skin are really what you eat. If your diet consists of trans fats, junk food, sugary drinks and excess oil and salt, then your skin will show the after-effects in the form of acne breakouts, oily patches, fine lines and pigmentation. However, if you eat fresh fruit and vegetables and drink sugarless drinks, your skin health will improve dramatically. The simplest and most palatable way to get raw or lightly cooked fruit and vegetables in your diet is to make a salad. But do you really have the time to prep for a salad every day? Here’s an easier fix: instead of finely chopping ingredients for a salad, blend them with plain yoghurt or milk and make a smoothie instead. With a smoothie, you get all the health benefits of consuming the same nutritious produce minus most of the effort to chop, grate or steam.

#5 Use wax strips instead of scheduling salon appointments.

Every person wants hairless, glowing skin – but it often means a trip the salon to get the visible body hair waxed off. You don’t often have the luxury of sitting at the salon for hours, though you would like to get pampered often. The obvious quick fix to the problem of visible body hair is to buy cold wax strips and quickly wax off the hair in the privacy of your bathroom or bedroom. Cold wax strips take some getting used to, especially when you must pull them off swiftly. But once you understand how to do it, you will not need to schedule a waxing appointment for weeks or months.