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Today I’d like to talk about one of the easiest ways to achieve smoother skin that’s frequently overlooked.

Exfoliating not only improves your skin’s health, but with a proper exfoliant and a consistent routine, makes your skin visually appear softer and smoother as well.

Sometimes this process is nearly instantaneous!

To plant a garden today is to believe in tomorrow.

– Me

Getting Started

First thing’s first, when we talk about exfoliants, what exactly are we talking about? Well, there are generally two types of exfoliants that you’ll commonly run into.

• The first being a chemical exfoliant, such as a type of subtle acid, that’s used to dissolve dead skin cells.
• The second being a mechanical exfoliant, such as an at-home scrub you may use in the bath or shower.

Mechanical exfoliants are mainly going to be the subject of this article, as it genuinely surprises me how many people I’ve met who are looking for smoother skin, but don’t indulge in this very simple solution to achieving it.

Not to mention, this generally takes (at most) just a couple of minutes around the time you shower.

What Should I Expect?

It’s hard to know exactly what an exfoliant is going to do for your skin if you’ve never used one before.

However, for most who frequently exfoliate, the broadly reported outcome is significantly smoother, softer skin.

How soft are we talking? For me, this makes it so that my hands can easily glide up and down my thighs without being able to feel the direction of hair growth.

And speaking of hair, I (like many others) also find the hair in regions I’ve exfoliated to be noticeably softer. I find my skin to look healthier, heal from blemishes faster, and feel much more supple when getting handsy in those areas.

Starting with Scrubs

While we’ll talk about other types of mechanical exfoliants, one of the easiest and most popular has to be the body scrub.

You may have seen these around body washes in hygiene sections at the store. Think colored containers–usually in the form of a tub–filled with a thick, strange, rough-looking paste.

Some popular brands are: Tree Hut, OGX, and Dove.

So How Should I Use It?

The idea with these scrubs is that, near the end of your bath or shower, you’ll pop open the top to the container, dip your fingers in, scrape out some of the coarse paste inside, and rub it on the areas of skin you wish to exfoliate.

If you’ve never tried out a body scrub like this before, it’s really an amazing addition to your routine.

Not only will it leave your skin feeling noticeably smoother moments after you exfoliate, but this feeling will continue for a while after you’ve finished.

Not to mention it’ll leave your skin smelling great!

Other Mechanical Exfoliants

While I’ve mentioned this post will focus on mechanical exfoliants, this isn’t just in the form of pre and post-shower body scrubs and lotions.

There are several other techniques, such as dry brushing and loofahs, that work just as well.

Dry brushing is the practice of using a dry, firm-bristled brush (as is in the image above) on your skin before you take a shower.

While it may seem a little silly, and makes you feel a little like a horse when you’re first getting going, the effects of dry brushing can go very much beyond cleansing your skin of dead cells.

Dry brushing has been credited with stimulating the lymphatic system, exfoliating the skin, removing toxins, increasing circulation and energy, and reducing cellulite.

By raising the tides of health across your skin, you should expect to see this effort translate into younger, smoother, tighter skin.

What About Loofahs?

You can’t forget about loofahs.

Time to look inward: how do you wash your body while you’re in the shower? Do you use your hands? Do you use a washcloth? Perhaps you use one of those poufs.

Regardless of what you do, know that the time you spend washing your body could also serve a dual purpose with exfoliating your skin; as is the case with poufs or loofahs.

I personally use a natural loofah, but only because I thought it’d seem cool. The effect is that it left me with much smoother skin, and made showering feel much better too.

I imagine it’s the human equivalent to what cats do up against those scratch posts, and it’s amazing, so don’t miss out on it.

A Quick Note on Body Washes

Don’t forget that the body wash you use can also have a hand at smoothing your skin.

You don’t necessarily have to invest in a body wash that comes with micro-beads or other exfoliants mixed in.

Indeed, combining all of the above with something like that may lead to you over-exfoliating your skin, which is something you should always try to avoid.

A simple moisturizing body wash can do wonders for your skin though, and help it to catch a break between all of the exfoliating you do.

Keeping your skin moist and hydrated can help your skin to:

• Heal faster
• Work better with the exfoliants you mix into your routine
• Improve skin elasticity
• Reduce the appearance of lines and wrinkles
• Leave your skin looking younger and healthier

How Often Should I Exfoliate?

Well, that’s mostly up to you.

There’s certainly a correct answer here, and it depends on your individual skin type along with the sort of goals you have for taking care of your skin.

If you were to freely Google this you’d find articles suggesting that you should only ever exfoliate once every ten days, once every other day, once every couple days, and so on. There really is no one-sized fits all answer here!

Just make sure you don’t overdo it…

Don’t Overdo It!

A really important note in all of this is to watch how much you’re exfoliating, and to pay attention to the signs that come with over-exfoliating.

As you gradually work up to exfoliating more and more (and you should gradually work up to it), pay close attention to your skin. It might be telling you to give things a rest.

Signs of over exfoliating include:

• Excessive drying of the skin
• Redness
• Peeling
• Sudden onset of a rash or hives

It should be noted that you should never be exfoliating skin with open wounds, blisters, or infections; as this may serve to worsen those skin conditions.

Be careful how often you exfoliate as well!

In addition to working your way up, I’ve come to recognize that a high bound for how often I can exfoliate is a little over once every other day, or less than half of the days per week.

I will usually dry brush every day (along with use of a loofah in the shower), but only end my showers off with body scrubs three to four days a week.

But that’s just me!

Where Should I Exfoliate?

We should probably mentioned, you don’t have to exfoliate everywhere.

Every once in a while, it might be a nice touch to exfoliate areas of your body that might have been busy collecting dead skin cells (especially if those areas don’t always get a lot of your attention). But with that said, you may not find it to be very cost effective to be exfoliating your whole body once every other day.

I can’t even imagine how much time that’d take.

Instead, focus on the areas of your body that you’d want to see smoother and softer.

Generally, and in my case, this would be both thighs and around my butt. On the butt-side of things, remember not to scrub off the important part of your butt.

Additionally, getting exfoliants in that special area is something that can end up being very painful, so be careful. Often enough, however, you can usually use most of those scrubs like you would any other body wash.

Ingredients Matter

In taking a look at all of the different scrubs that are available, one very daunting task seems to be finding one with the right ingredients.

Picking between the hydrating boost of vitamin C, the active moisturizing qualities of shea butter, the anti-microbial properties of tea tree oil, and the health-engendering benefits of vitamin E seems impossible.

The real practical advice here is that the ingredients can help, but don’t let the ingredients stop you from exfoliating.

There are probably a couple that are more objectively beneficial for your skin, and barring any nuance here with what the different added-in ingredients might do you in ways that are purely unique to you, these scrubs wont be on your skin that long.

Understand that the real benefit here is getting those dead cells off of your skin.

Exfoliants for Avoiding Ingrown Hairs

It may not seem obvious, but if you’re someone who suffers from frequent blemishes that could very well be the result of ingrown hairs on your skin, exfoliating regularly can do wonders for you.

In addition to getting rid of dead skin cells and “clearing a path” for more typical hair growth, exfoliating generally helps to minimize inflammation and lightening pigmentation marks that can be left behind from blemishes.

Not only can exfoliating help to prevent ingrown hairs altogether, but it can also help to treat existing ingrown hairs.

Just make sure you’re just rubbing a bunch of scrubs or otherwise irritating skin exfoliants on open wounds.

That would be bad.

Tips For Saving Money

One thing you may find when buying one of these great big tubs full of whatever scrub is that you somehow seem to run out of them pretty fast.

In the beginning, I was trying to work up to the advice of exfoliating once every other day, and one of the things I found was that I was running out of what I had all the time.

When you get some of that paste out of the tub you have, and get to applying it, remember that your skin should be wet, but not dripping wet.

More wet than damp, but if water is actively dripping down your skin, you’ll find that a lot of what you had on your hands seems to just vanish into some slippery mystery residue.

Wrapping Things Up

Exfoliating is a really wonderful and useful technique to have in your skincare arsenal, especially if your goal is to see smoother, softer, blemish-free skin.

It’s an extremely easy, cost-effective way to see results quick, and doesn’t have to add to the “work” your routine may already consist of around shower time.

Instead, exfoliating can be one of those little treats to yourself, leaving you feeling and smelling amazing!

Happy exfoliating 😊