How to Create a Quick Beauty Routine for New Mums
Practising self-care forms an important tenor of adjusting to motherhood for the first time. At such an exhausting and all-consuming time of your life, tending to your own needs is more important than you think. A beauty routine goes a long way in helping you reach your optimum, healthier self. Raising a child heralds a signature concoction of sleepless nights and newfound worries – none of which focus your attention to your complexion or hair.
When stepping into a role that so explicitly centres around the needs of others, investing in self-care may appear counter-intuitive at first. Yet there's a strong correlation between investing in self-care and improving your mood and stress responses. This is exactly what you need when embarking on the physically and mentally demanding journey that is motherhood. A beauty routine gives you space and time to focus on your own needs, so you can best tend to others. This article will highlight easy, time–saving and effective ways to create a quick beauty routine for new mums.
How to fit in a beauty routine into your everyday routine
Introducing and sticking to a daily beauty routine doesn’t have to be time-consuming and labour intensive. Sourcing those spare moments to dedicate to yourself can be really tough, but there are ways to gradually integrate small daily habits into your everyday routine. The trick? Discipline and perseverance. Start by introducing self-care on a smaller scale, to then gradually build your odd application of moisturiser or primer into more of a routine. By starting with small and modest plans you avoid the risk of setting yourself up for disappointment.
Set realistic goals and start by putting aside just 5 minutes a day to tend to yourself. When you don’t have an excess of time on your hands, you need to prioritise what’s most important and needed for you and your body to feel good. This will depend on whether you have any specific body or face needs. If you suffer from dry skin, invest in a moisturising spray that can be swiftly applied as soon as you step out the shower. If you experience oily and blemish-prone skin, keep tea tree or salicylic infused pads by your bedside table for easy access for when you wake up and go to bed. Easy to use products go a long way, but where you store these products can make an incredible difference . Especially when carrying out chores or tasks around the house, making sure your products are easily accessible is really important. If you’re a stay at home mom, identify which room you spend most of your time in with your little one.
Whether it’s your kitchen or living room, strategically store a little wash bag in an easy to access place with your staple beauty products. This way you will be able to stay close to your little one, whilst tending to your face and body. Lastly and most importantly, whilst it may seem obvious, the best way to perfect a quick beauty routine is repeating the same steps each day until it becomes almost second nature. Even if the steps are rushed and not quite perfect, you will be surprised by how effective the simple exercise of repetition is when it comes to building new habits. Challenge yourself to carry out the same steps each day. Even if you end up rushing and doing a botched job, it's important to try and maintain a routine. The “every little helps” mantra could not be more fitting in this context – no matter how small your efforts, they will reward you in the long run and your body, face, and mind will reap the benefits!
Hacks for fast makeup
Makeup serves as a trustworthy and reliable part of a beauty routine. With a few flicks of mascara and foundation, you can instantly transform an eye bags ridden face to appear fresher, brighter and more alert. Adopting a few makeup hacks here and there can really maximise your time and efficiency when applying makeup as a new mum. Take your average mascara for example – great at elongating your lashes and increasing volume to help frame and accentuate your eyes. Another use for mascara is eyeliner; just simply apply pressure in a line along your eyelid. Use an earbud if any of the mascara travels too high up your eye-lid to avoid it looking messy. Do you love lipstick but struggle to keep stay on top of the constant re-applications? No problem, simply apply tissue paper to dry the area before applying translucent powder to fix the colour in place. This will ensure that your lip colour doesn' rub off too quickly.
Another great hack is opting for a makeup compact that’s multifunctional and can be applied to different areas of your face. A good example of this is a brown eye shadow. If you get the shade right for your natural colouring, you can easily use brown eye shadow to colour in your brows and your eyelids, as well as eyeliner on your upper and lower lid, to create a quick and easy smoky eye. The same goes for skincare. Supporting healthy skin with multiple face crèmes and primers takes time which you probably don't have. So why not use a translucent sun crème for not just protection against the sun, but also as a moisturiser and primer? Simple and easy. Embracing multifunctional products is an essential way for new mums to save time with their beauty routine. The same goes for the tools you use. Try applying eyeliner to the rim of your eyelash curler and voila – you can curl and apply eyeliner at the same time!
Products that hide tiredness
To rescue your face from showing visible signs of sleep deprivation, makeup can yield great results. It's no secret that constantly being on your feet looking after your little one doesn’t do wonders for your skin and face. One of the main culprits has to be eye bags. The area around your eyes tends to be the most sensitive as the skin is thinner and more delicate – making it more susceptible to showing signs of discolouring and sagging. Luckily there’s a whole host of products that target this area to help reduce visible signs of tiredness. Seek out gel-based products that include cooling ingredients such as green tea and cucumber, as these work to reinvigorate the skin.
Another effective ingredient is caffeine which you can find in Garnier's Caffeine Anti Dark Circles 2 in 1 Eye Roll-On, which targets those dark circles under your eyes with the antioxidant vitamin C. This product is small and easy to transport and can easily be chucked in your handbag and applied on-the-go for instant results. Eye masks and eye gel patches are another great and refreshing option that can be used at home when you’re catching a bit of downtime. Aided by the ingredient ginko biloba, Skyn's Iceland Hydra cool eye gels work to reduce puffiness. Another tell-tale symptom of fatigue is slightly greying skin. To give your face a boost, opt for products that contain the ingredient hyaluronic acid which helps to moisten, invigorate and plump the skin. As saving on time is high on your priority list as a new mum, Tatcha’s ‘The Pearl Tinted Eye Illuminating Treatment’ from Sephora is a great product which combines a moisturiser with concealer.
What essential products are best for quick fixes?
As a new mum, you need products that can be applied on the go, anywhere anytime. When it comes to hair, it can be difficult to set aside time to shower, never mind wash your hair. Dry shampoo is an incredibly effective way to target greasy roots and transform your hair from feeling lifeless to fresh and voluminous. As you touch your hair quite a lot, it’s also important to keep your hair grease-free to avoid transferring the grease to your face to avoid blemishes and excessive sheen. Whilst the market has plummeted as far as dry shampoo is concerned, the best and most reliable brand of dry shampoo has to be Baptise. Another great way to rescue limp and greasy hair that hasn’t seen a wash for more than a couple of days is a simple blow-dry at home. Target the roots to provide more lift and bounce.
Moving to the face region, another great and essential product which is perfect for quick fixes is drop foundation. Favoured by many, drop foundation allows you to mix your moisturiser and foundation. This saves time on separately applying products. With this drop foundation, you’re in control of the ratio of foundation to moisturiser; simply drop as much colour pigment as your wish to your moisturiser of choice. To avoid a cakey finish, ensure that you don’t mix with a moisturiser that’s too thick. Great brands to look out for include ISDIN and Clinique ‘s ‘Blend it Yourself’ colour pigment. If you suffer from dry skin, you should mix your colour pigment with oil to soothe and nourish, leaving your skin supple and fresh. These products are great as they save having to apply multiple products to your face, leaving you more time to move on with your day.
