My High-Maintenance Habits for a Lower-Maintenance Life

I want to make a case for being high-maintenance haha but I want to be specific about it, because “just simplifying your life” advice is typically so vague and unhelpful.

Here’s my actual position: there are about a dozen things I am pretty unreasonable about. I schedule them, I make them happen, I do them when I’m tired. And the payoff isn’t (just) that I feel virtuous 😇. The real payoff is that everything around those dozen things gets easier: my makeup routine is six minutes because of what I do to my skin at night. Dinner is a non-event on Wednesday because of what I did on Sunday. I don’t spiral about my energy levels anymore because I lift three times a week, eat to fuel my body and supplement accordingly. And when I plan ahead, future me is SO beyond appreciative.

So the balance is being high-maintenance in twelve places to be low-maintenance everywhere else. Or at least that’s the goal.

Here’s the whole list, with how often I do each one and the thing it replaced. Steal whatever’s useful!

Skincare is what you ask me about most, so I’m going to be really specific about the how and the how often, because that’s the info I feel gets buried the most by others.

The thesis for all of it is that I front-load my skincare so I can back off my makeup. Every treatment below is in service of leaving the house in SPF, some cheek color and mascara. That’s the whole return I’m optimizing for — not perfection, just not needing to take time to cover anything up.

Keep reading for the exact treatments I get, how often I get them, where I go & other standing appointments I have that help me create a lower-maintenance life! And as always, THANK YOU for being here <3 <3