Everyday Carry

Lotion is a common item carried in purses and like the for-profit American medical system, the lotion companies seem to be happy to make your problem worse in order to sell more product because they don't do a lot of customer education. 

If you are in a dry climate, using lotion makes the problem worse a la this story about my kid. In a dry climate, you should be using oil, not lotion. 

When I desk shared in my corporate job, I had a super filthy keyboard through no fault of my own and discovered that cleaning my keyboard helped heal up my cracked, bleeding hands. 

I recommend you treat dry skin nutritionally. At a minimum, you need healthy fats to help clear that up and it's possible that American women perpetually being on a diet is part of why they buy so much lotion.

That won't solve it for everyone. Some people work outdoors in cold weather and have more serious challenges. But it should eliminate the need for carrying lotion for a lot of women.

When I did wear makeup in my twenties, my everyday routine was:

1. Eyelash curler. Do this first before mascara because mascara makes the lashes stick to it. I never did touch up. It was one and done. I've never heard that a lash curler is an item commonly found on everyday carry lists. 

2. Mascara, lash comb and eyeliner outside the eye, not inside. Again, I didn't carry any of this with me. It was one and done and if you don't cry your eyes out or something like that, this should be good for the day for most people. 

3. Lip gloss or chapstick. Yes, I sometimes carried this with me.

I'm researching it. I don't wear makeup in part because I react allergically to stuff, in part because makeup can harbor germs which promote infection and in extreme cases, this can cost you an eye. 

I suspect women wearing makeup for the office -- which is usually done with a lighter hand, so probably not heavily applying it -- who have more than one lipstick color routinely have a lipstick for well over 6 months. This conflicts with recommended best practices for health and safety.

I'm trying to figure out if a very small lipstick would be more purse friendly while helping to ensure that it gets used up in the under 6 months I've seen recommended for hygiene purposes. 

As a kid, all my lipsticks were free samples from the Avon lady and these were tiny and I loved them. I see zero reason we can't sell tiny lipsticks. 

There's no reason lipstick needs to be the size it typically is and my impression is this is not only not purse friendly, it puts women in a position to both overspend and also hang onto makeup unsafely long times. Women with office jobs or who otherwise are only lightly made up may be both exposing themselves to health hazards and routinely throwing out an only half used lipstick. 

Smaller is probably better for more reasons than being travel friendly. 

Routinely throwing out makeup is not only expensive, it conflicts with large-scale environmental goals of encouraging a low or no waste lifestyle. Yet I never hear "saner makeup products" listed as a goal on any environmental agendas.

I will design purse-friendly tools.