How Working From Home Changed My Beauty Routine
Remember the days of getting up at the crack of dawn, doing your hair and makeup everyday before work & heading out the door to get to the office? Yeah, me too. Do I miss it? Sometimes, honestly I do. I miss the normalcy, the routine & I almost kind of miss my alarm going off at 5:30am to give me enough time to get ready before I left for work… but I don’t miss that part that much.
As well all know, a pandemic was declared in March 2020, and working from home became just about every office-worker's new reality. We were forced to find a “new normal” (remember hearing that every day at the beginning of this?), and find a new routine that worked for us, and that new routine groove didn’t only apply to work. The pandemic and working from home drastically changed my beauty routine as well. Let’s chat about it.
Skincare
Starting with my skincare routine. I’d say even pre-pandemic, I was pretty religious with my skincare routine. I’d start the day off with a three-step skincare regimen of cleanse, tone & moisturize (and eye cream, of course!), and end the day with removing that day's makeup, followed by the same three-step system. When the pandemic became a reality for us in North America, and we were all told to work from home, the first thing I did was majorly focus on making sure my skin was getting tons of TLC. I’d go days without wearing makeup, but continue with washing my face morning & night, as we all should.
As the pandemic went on, I found myself getting lazy, and as masks became not just suggested, but mandatory, my skin started majorly breaking out. Like uncontrollably. My usual skincare was no longer working for me, no matter what I did. By December, I made a switch to a new line, Rodan & Fields, and specifically their line geared towards adult acne, Unblemish. I’ve been using this skincare line now for about 6 or 7 weeks, and I’ve seen quite a dramatic change in my skin. I definitely went through a period the first 3-4 weeks where my skin was extremely dry and irritated, but once I got through that, my skin has very comfortably adjusted & is clearing up quite nicely. I still get the occasional break out & if I’m being perfectly honest, I’m a total skin-picker, so I’m my skin's own worst enemy to a certain degree.
Makeup
I kind of already got into this in the skincare section of this blog, but let’s start from the beginning. Pre-pandemic, I was the kind of person that wouldn’t go anywhere without throwing on a full face of makeup — foundation, concealer, bronzer, eyeliner, mascara & everything in between. I took a lot of pride in the fact that I was always fully “made up” & ready to take on the world. And then March 2020. The stress of everything going on alone, made me spend my last few days at work without a drop of makeup on (to which I’m sure my coworkers were shocked to see me like that!), and then working from home started.
As I mentioned above, I stopped wearing makeup for like… weeks. The only time I was putting makeup on was for any blog content or Instagram photos I was planning to take. I mean, we weren’t allowed to go anywhere & I wasn’t all that concerned about what the people at the grocery store thought of me, so why not give my skin a chance to breathe, right? As far as my makeup routine itself goes, though it stayed similar in steps, the products have changed quite a bit. I used to be, as YouTuber NikkieTutorials would say, a full coverage queen. That included full coverage face products & always doing an elaborate eyeshadow look, winged eyeliner and tons of mascara. Now, 2021 Emily is far more into a more light-weight, natural look, which I think can partly be accredited to the launch of Selena Gomez’s cosmetics line, Rare Beauty, since it’s a really natural-look kind of makeup line, which let’s be honest, really appealed to a lot of people given the life we’re living right now.
I’m curious to know, has the pandemic & working from home has changed your beauty routine? I’d guess it probably has unless you’ve been working all along through this whole mess that has been the last year or so of our lives. It’s crazy to think we’re approaching the year mark of living like this! Thank you for reading along and I’ll see you again on Wednesday for a brand new blog post & newest post in my Creating My Dream series.
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