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’ve developed my own “lazy” system to get a pedicure done in the shower. The whole thing probably takes at most 10-15 minutes. This is my quick winter pedicure routine!
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’m a shower girl.
Before Your Shower
As I’m 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’m in the shower, I do my regular shower routine, but I’ll 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 this one, but I’ve also had good results with this 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 toe nails. 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 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’ve 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’ve 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’m out of the shower I do put some lotion on my feet, but it’s 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’m 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 use a little rubbing alcohol and wait until it is dry before applying anything. I do a layer of base coat, 2 layers of color (this brands lasts the longest for my pedicures) 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’ll 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.
Iām a doctor, a mommy and a bit of a beauty addict. If you let me, I can take 2 hours to get ready in the morning. Really. I'm on a quest for faster beauty that works!
Great post!
Unlike you I dislike salon pedicures and manicures and much prefer to do them myself, saving a ton of time and $$$. I do my pedicures very similarly to you, however I should probably add the scrub.
Isn’t Seche Vite just the best?? For those unfamiliar with SV, your manicure/pedicure will dry in a fraction of the time of any other top coat. With the addition of SV, my manicures are finished in short time, look professional and last a good week; if I were more careful, they might last longer. It’s fabulous!
For those struggling with soft, thin fingernails Nailtique’s Formula II is amazing! (I wish I could get a commission on all of the SV and Nailtique Formula II I sell! š )
Hi! Are all nail polish brands safe for pregnant women? Are there any no chip products, like CND Shellac, safe for pregnant women?
Your nails can’t absorb anything, so I’m more concerned with the process and how it is done. I would avoid gel nails and such that are basically filed off, you don’t want to breathe in the dust and it really destroys your nails anyways. Shellac and similar polishes that are applied like a regular polish and UV cured should be ok