How do you wash your hands?

This cracking was a problem during my years as a bartender too. Every soap is a chemical, and in order to do the cleaning that it does it removes oils; natural skin oils too! There is no shame in protecting your skin that is exposed daily to these chemicals with skin moisturizer or even baby oil. Yea, not so macho? Neither is skin disorders or bacteria seeping into your body through damaged skin. :-/

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Do the nitrile gloves make your hands sweaty when itā€™s warm out? And do you end up getting water inside them constantly making your hands mushy like you stayed in the shower too long? I thought about trying them based on another recent thread with an impressive video on how tough they are, but i was concerned about these two points.

Yes, I agree. Donā€™t use petroleum based products though. Extra virgin olive oil is great. But, organic cocanut oil is betterā€¦usually get it in the cooking oil section.
Need to buy a bag of lemons. Before you go to bed get two shopping bags, cut a lemon in half, squirt lemon juice in each bag, rub your hands with the lemon halfā€™s for 15-20 minutes, put your hands in the bags, and put a loose fitting rubber band on to hold bags on your hands. Take bags off when you wake up. Before you go to work rub your hands with olive oil or cocanut oil, unlike petroleum based products and hand lotions, these two oils will be absorbed quickly.
Try to put the oil on your hands a couple of times each day. In a couple of weeks of doing this youā€™ll notice a huge change.

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I use olive oil or coconut oil with sugar. Cleans hands up real nice and keeps them smooth, even cleans hands with greasy automotive oil.

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Frank:
You have lovely hands. Do you moisturize?

Billy Tim Denham:
Iā€™m Sorry?

Frank:
You know, Iā€™ve tried all sorts of moisturizers. I even went fragrance free for a whole year. Now my sister, she uses some kind of uhā€¦ uhā€¦ uhā€¦ uhā€¦ aloe vera with a little sunscreen in it, and ideally, we should all wear gloves when going to bed, but I found out that that creates a kind of an interference with myā€¦ social agenda, you know what I mean.

One of my favorite scenes from Oceans Eleven

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Yea, Iā€™m not so keen on citrus acid on my skin over night. Hell, grapefruit gives me canker sores in my mouth, so I have to limit my consumption.

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Yeah they do not breathe well, but thatā€™s kind of the point. If you size them right, they should fit like a second skin. Then you will not be walking around with a pair of water balloons on the end of your arms.

I generally do not wear any one pair for more than a couple of hours at a time, so my hands can cycle moist to dry a few times throughout the day thus preventing fungus.

The gloves are cheap at Harbor Freight. Try a box and see how you like them.

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Small price to pay to have normal hands.

I do storefronts so the gloves come off a lot.

Iā€™m all done with the dried out window cleaners hand maintenance routine. Done using ointments, wearing cotton gloves at night and polishing dead skin off my hands with a puma stone.

Sure the nitrile gloves can be a pain in the summer but itā€™s worth it to me.

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12.5% SH makes your hands look new againā€¦:joy::joy::joy::joy:

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The sugar is a great idea.

Citric acid promotes healing in different ways:
The more acidic the pH, of your skin, the harder it is for bacteria to live and grow in.
The mild acid triggers the bodies healing systems to close up the cracked skin.
The acid eats away at the dead skin.
It doesnā€™t take long for rough dry skin to be healthy soft skin again.
There is research to support these claims.

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Wow, guys, i thought this was gonna end up one of those threads that gets 4 views, 1 like, and one four word reply. Had no idea what a wealth of hand-maintenance knowledge was in the community! Lol

@wps Sweet idea! I really like natural methods like that. Btw, have you tried salt instead of sugar?

@Dee I havenā€™t tried this, but a friend told me about an old Mexican fever remedy involving cutting a lemon in half and rubbing it in your back. He was a skeptic (though Mexican himself) but reluctantly tried it in desperation when nothing else worked. Fever was gone within a few hours. Random, but your lemon idea made me think of that. Thanks for sharing the tip to use them for hands too!

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Oh and btw, I feel like Iā€™ve mentioned this before, but speaking of olive oil and skin care, itā€™s amazing for shaving too. Havenā€™t used shaving cream in like a decade.

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This makes a good amount of sense since early on i would have hands that were really bad, but ever since I switched to citron Oates Laboratoriesā„¢ - Product Display about 13 years ago I have never had a problem.
I never wear gloves, never use any moisturizers or anything like that and my hands are perfectly clean with no dirt in the lines.

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Wow thatā€™s pretty cool

If I could like this post 1,000 times I would. I feel the EXACT SAME WAY.

I used to hate getting the cracked skin and constantly having dirt under my nails, etc. and I hated having cracked skin 8 months of the year.

I wear nitrile dipped gloves that I get in bulk at Samā€™s, and Iā€™ll even rewash them a few times and reuse them. As a bonus, they provide extra grip which comes in handy all the time. Also, if theyā€™ve gotten dirty and I need clean hands at a house for something (like moving furniture), BOOM, clean pair and weā€™re good.

Yes, my hands sweat sometimes. But a lot of times they donā€™t. Itā€™s a small price to pay.

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Is this your window cleaning soap?

What helped me was using the squirt bottle more and more on route. My hands get wet when I first start out with the bucket, but then I use the water bottle to put the solution on the mop. Your hands will get more torn up with contact with soap, so limit the soap and your hands wonā€™t get so bad.

But I started carrying a fingernail clipper on my key chain so when my skin started to split, Iā€™d cut the flaps off so that I wouldnā€™t pick at them and make them worse. Iā€™d also use them to trim up the calluses every now and then.

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That the way I run now, 95% of the day I donā€™t touch a bucket, the squirt bottle saves time and hands and ectā€¦

These help a lot toā€¦

ā€¦Now if I could just figure out how to attach a short 4ā€™ pole to my work belt or boab Iā€™d be good to goā€¦ :wink:

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Tactical Carabiner.

Then just tie a loop around your poleā€™s handle (or a zip tie loop) and latch.

Easy.

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