The Twenty-Dollar Skincare Routine That Actually Works

I am going to tell you what's on the shelf in my bathroom and exactly how much it costs, because the entire skincare industry would prefer I not.

One bottle of cheap drugstore gentle cleanser. About six dollars. I use it morning and night. I do not use anything fancy because my skin does not want anything fancy. My skin wants to be left alone in a kind way.

One jar of plain moisturizer with SPF for the morning. About nine dollars at Target. I put it on every single day, even in February, even on the days I'm not leaving the house, because the sun comes through the kitchen window when I'm doing dishes and the sun does not care that I'm 'just inside today.'

One bottle of basic moisturizer without SPF for the night. Three dollars on sale. I slather it on like I am painting a wall.

One tube of lip balm. Two dollars at the gas station, the white-and-blue one we all know. I keep one in every coat pocket and one in the car and one in my purse and one beside the bed.

That is it. That is the lineup. The math is twenty dollars and the skin is the skin I have been carrying around for thirty-four years and which I am, slowly, learning to like.

I want you to hear me say this: an expensive serum is not going to give you the thing you actually want. The thing you actually want is to look in the mirror and feel like you. The serum cannot give you that. Water gives you that. Sleep gives you that. The lock on the bathroom door gives you that. Sometimes a friend with scissors and a twelve-dollar bang trim gives you that.

The skincare is just the small, daily honoring of the face. The face that has cried over a sick toddler and laughed at her husband and yelled at the dog and prayed in the parking lot of the pediatrician's. The face is sacred. The skincare is the candle you light at the altar.

Run today: six minutes total of jogging, in increments. The British man is becoming bolder. I am becoming bolder. Three actual blocks before I had to walk. My pace, if you must know, is glacial. I do not care.

Worked Miller's eleven to three. On lunch I sat on the bench out front in the sun and ate the salad I packed, with chickpeas and feta and the dressing in a little jar so it didn't get sad. Mr. Miller walked by and said, 'You look healthy, Lucy,' which from him is practically a sonnet.

Picked up the kids. Emma had lost her library card and her left shoe. We found the library card. The shoe remains a mystery. Made pasta with peas because the kids will eat anything with peas in it, a fact I will not question.

Almost six. Candle on the counter. Face washed. Cheap moisturizer applied. Lip balm reapplied. The altar tended. Talk tomorrow. — Lucy