As you can probably tell, I can get pretty busy as a college student. I tend to neglect less urgent matters like blog posts and graphic design personal projects to focus on urgent obligations like homework, cooking and feeding my dogs. So I have been experimenting with everyday getting-ready tips and tricks to see what really works for me on my difficult days, i.e. midterms, long days of classes and more.
Define your everyday hair.
You can explore the internet and discover thousands of different hair tutorials, but none of that will solve the issue of getting your hair done every morning. Under a certain amount of stress, your body does what seems most efficient and what it knows best. So if that messy bun is your go-to look, you most likely will be rocking that the day of a stressful meeting or midterm. This tip may seem quite obvious, but your mind can always learn new habits. Want to be that girl with wavy locks almost everyday? Well first make sure you can make that happen in 5 minutes, and then practice it every day. Give yourself about 30 minutes to learn the 5 minute tricks because your mind is not ready to fully incorporate it at first. Save yourself time by also looking at over-night tricks that do all the hard work for you.
TIP: Don’t have time in the morning to curl your hair? Divide your hair into 3 to 4 sections. Take one section and wrap it cleanly around two or three fingers (depending on the size of curl you are looking for). Use a clean sock to cover the loop of hair you made and twist the sock to wrap it again. Repeat for each section and then go to sleep. Wake up and remove your sock balls and loosen the curls with your fingers.
Define your go-to outfits for those days.
Whether you’re feeling”lazy”, “fat”, or “just plain shitty”, you can’t be expected to waste time on thinking of what to wear. So take a preemptive approach. On a better day, just go through your closet and put two or three easy “bad” day outfits. Try them on so you know how they fit. Most likely, if you try it on, you will have a mental image of the outfit to refer to when you’re second guessing yourself on said shitty day. This is also a great time to evaluate if you are missing basic wardrobe pieces that can make the daily outfit decisions much easier.
TIP: On those bad days, if you do nothing else, you should take a quick shower. You don’t necessarily need to wash your hair – shower cap it! The shower will definitely shake off some bad vibes. Also if you have a wrinkly shirt, just bring it into the restroom for a free steam. Wrinkle-free and clean is a better way to start any day.
Be punctual.
Or arrive early if you can. Most times, if you’re early but you don’t feel ready, you can fake it. You have a few minutes to calm yourself down while everyone arrives. There is also a very high chance that others are also not as ready as they’d like to be. Have a bias towards positive action, don’t let worry and fear make matters worse.
Take care of your skin.
Nothing feels better than waking up and realizing that all you need is some lip gloss and mascara to be out the door. Your goal should be to have skin that naturally glows and has very few blemishes, if any. I personally would like to eventually eliminate the need for foundation. Now everyone has their own skin concerns, but there are two things that we can all do: drink water everyday, 2 liters of water or more & have a solid daily skincare routine. Water will keep your system clean and functioning, but it also greatly improves your skin and reduces the chance of developing more blemishes. There have been times that drinking lots of water over a few days cleared my blemishes completely. Having a daily skincare routine is very important because good skin doesn’t happen overnight. Patience, good products and routine create the best long-lasting skin results. Figure out your skin concerns and build your routine around that. There are plenty of experts you can talk to at Sephora or online resources like YouTube. Keeping your skin clean and healthy will even make you feel better on a bad day.
Hope these four tips can help you out. Feel free to also share your advice on looking “put together” in the comments!
Thanks!
