A Glorious manicure or pedicure
You don’t have to be a professional nail technician to groom your fingers and toes—just some basic tools that you may already have at home, like a nail file and clippers. To keep it simple, clip the tips of your nails and file down any sharp edges to avoid snags in your clothes or scratches on your skin. Then, if you have one, paint a clear coat on your nails to make them look shiny and healthy. Repeat this process on your toes.
If you want to try your hand at a spa-like nail treatment, place your fingertips in a warm bowl of water to soften the skin, then clean up your cuticles using a cuticle pusher. From there, trim your tips with a clipper, shape the edges with a file, and buff out the tops of the nails with a nail buffer or an old, worn-down file that’s not too rough. Once you’ve completed these steps, wash your hands and proceed with a clear coat or a colorful polish that flashes your work. For your feet, you can do the same process but use a foot spa—or, in a pinch, a bucket filled with warm water—to prep your feet.
Upgrade your pedicure with a foot peel
While you’re pampering your feet, you might as well stick ‘em in a “foot peel.” Don’t worry—it sounds scarier than it is. The popular Baby Foot Exfoliation Foot Peel claims to “rebirth” your feet using fruit acids that remove dead, callused, and cracked skin through exfoliation. Leave the booties on for 60 minutes and your feet will slowly peel over the next week or two—although, this may work better for some than others. You may want to avoid this treatment in the warmer months (who wants to see their feet peeling out of their sandal?) but it’s perfect right now, when you’re shuffling around the house
Groom your eyebrows with care
Proceed with caution here—we are not trying to bring back the thin eyebrow trend of the early 2000s by accident. But if your wax or threading appointment is cancelled for the foreseeable future, you may want to clean up the stray hairs around your brows and trim any lengthy strands. It won’t keep you occupied for too long (if it does, you’re in the over-plucking danger zone), but it’s still a task you can do at home and it may even be a new beauty experiment for you.
The key to plucking is to pull with the grain, or in the direction that the hairs grow out from the skin, says Benefit Cosmetics’ Global Brow Expert, Jared Bailey. You also want to only pluck in a well-lit area or use a lighted makeup mirror and keep away from magnifying mirrors because you want to see the big picture of your face, not just focus in on a tiny section—zeroing in on a small section often leads to over-plucking. The safest bet is to pull clear outliers and not remove any hairs in the mainland of your brow. To trim long hairs, brush your brow up toward your hairline using a brow brush or spoolie and snip with small cosmetic scissors (erring on the side of keeping the hair long).
