Neutrogena Life

Monday is my Neutrogena Day.



Sometime after having my 4th baby, my hair started acting weird. A lot of it fell out, and that was not a welcome change after 9 months of such lustrous locks. But something else happened. No matter what I did, how I shampooed, which shampoo I used, or how long I rinsed, my hair remained oily looking at the crown of my head. After months of frustration, it finally dawned on me that maybe the problem was build-up. Residue from the shampoos and conditioners, that just wanted to stick around.

And then I remembered Neutrogena, from my hair-obsessed teenage years. Neutrogena is the anti-residue shampoo. Use it once a week, and the build-up is gone and your favorite shampoo works much better! What a relief!

So yesterday was my Neutrogena Day. My hair is bouncin' and behavin' now, lustrous and shiny as ever, and finally it feels clean. Just needed to remove that build-up.

I've added my Mary Kay Microdermabrasion to my Monday build-up removing routine. Might as well remove all those stubborn dead skin cells while we're deep cleaning and purging, right?

And while we're at it, what else can I purge? What other build-up has accumulated around this house? On Saturday, we tackled the kids' rooms. I require that they be kept in reasonable order all the time, but you know how stuff accumulates. Several times a year, but always before Christmas, I insist that the kids go through their toys, clothes, books, etc, and decide to give away to the needy the things that they've either outgrown, don't use, or no longer find interesting to make room for the new treasures coming. Two birds. One metaphorical stone. We donated lots of books to the library, and bags of clothes and toys to the Good Will store in town. Plenty of other stuff went into the trash. Ah, what a feeling! I love getting rid of stuff.

So yesterday, as I was removing residue from my hair (which doesn't have a chance to build up anymore, since I stay on it with my Neutrogena), and still glowing about the ordered bookshelves and clean bedrooms, I was thinking about this upcoming year, and what other build-up I need to focus on. The kind of dingy, pretend-it's-not-there gunk that makes its way into my life. Into my heart. Into my behavior. The kind of stuff that rears its ugly head in the form of impatience with my kids, emotional eating, a lack of zest for life, and neglect of myself.

Well, I could work on my selfishness. And then there's judgement. Oh, and procrastination. (I saved that one for last.) Plenty more, believe me.

If my hair feels this good with regular treatment, and my house feels this clean after some attention, I am so excited to think about what will happen to my life when I start stripping away the unnecessary build-up.