Give Yourself a 15-Minute Pedicure at Home
As much as I love going to get a pedicure, it isn’t often that I have an hour to spare for such a luxury! I have everything that I need at home to do my own pedicure. I have to admit that I have developed my own “lazy” system to get a pedicure done in the shower. The whole thing probably takes 10-15 minutes at most.
I do my at home pedicure in the shower because so many of the steps require water, are easy to multi-task with things like deep conditioning my hair, and the products often work better if my feet have been in warm water for a while. You could easily do this pedicure in the tub, but I am a shower girl.
Before your shower
As I am getting ready to get in the shower, I remove my nail polish. I prefer to do this with an acetone polish remover wipe. Non-acetone wipes also work, but take more scrubbing and I want to be done fast! I prefer wipes over remover and cotton rounds because the pads provide extra friction to get the polish off quickly and completely.
In the shower
Once I am in the shower, I do my regular shower routine, but I will add in a few steps. I use a pumice stone on my heels. I don’t spend a lot of time on it because this is something I do about once or twice a week. When washing my body, I use exfoliating mitts with my body wash. I spend a little extra time concentrating on my feet, especially around my ankles, which can get a bit dry.
Eventually I use a cuticle remover on my foot. I do this after the basic scrubbing because I feel like it is more effective once the really dry skin has been scrubbed off. My favorite cuticle remover is Sally Hansen Instant Cuticle Remover, but I have also had good results with Blue Cross Cuticle Remover. They both are in my shower all the time.
I use the cuticle remover all over my foot, including my heel and around my toenails. I wait about 30 seconds, and then start scrubbing my foot with the mitts again. Around my toenails, I use my thumbnail to push back the cuticles, and I run it over the cuticle to remove excess dry skin. This whole process needs to be fast, under 2 minutes or so. I don’t like to leave cuticle remover on my skin for too long.
After I have rinsed off the cuticle remover, I grab a oil-based salt scrub and use it all over my feet and legs. While I don’t really scrub at my feet (let’s face it, they have been pumiced, cuticle removed and scrubbed some more already), I do put the scrub on my feet and rub it around a bit just to get the oil into the skin. The oil will help lock in some of the extra moisture from the shower, helping my feet feel incredibly soft and hydrated later on.
Once I am out of the shower I do put some lotion on my feet, but it is just whichever lotion I’m using on my body. I typically apply it all over quickly and leave it at that.
After the shower
When I am ready to apply polish, I need to completely clean the nail surface. To get any residual lotion and/or oil from the body scrub off of my nails, I use a little rubbing alcohol and wait until it is dry before applying anything. I do a layer of base coat, two layers of color and finally a top coat. I usually let each layer dry a lot before the next layer, more than I do with a manicure when I tend to just layer over wet polish and let it all dry together.
Clean up secret
One really great thing about polish is that if you get some on your skin, you don’t need to obsess over cleaning it up. During the summer I will clean up any mistakes with an angled makeup brush and acetone, but in the winter I just let it dry on my skin. The next day in the shower, at the end of my shower I can run my thumbnails over the polish and it lifts right off of my skin.
Article written by Christine of 15 Minute Beauty
This article was written by the guest author listed at the end of the article.