coming clean

You have no idea how literal the title of this post is. Ha.

So last night Matt was hanging out with some dudes and I had the evening to myself at home. After finishing my book and an intense four minutes session of boxing, I decided that it'd be a great idea to take a nice relaxing bath.

Only my problem is-- sometimes, for me, baths aren't entirely relaxing. And I'll tell you why. It's the order of everything related to taking a bath. I feel like figuring out all of the details overwhelms me and stresses me out more than it's worth. I know, it sounds dumb. But it's a real (first-world) problem. Here're some of the issues I face:

1. I shower at night. So-regardless of taking a bath or not- by the time I go to bed, I must have washed my hair and face, etc., and be ready to go. This is a non-negotiable. I've been a nighttime-bather my whole life and I have no intention of ever waking up and doing it in the morning before work. So. Yes.

2. I have been led to believe (either by myself, or maybe my mom? or a magazine? who knows where this belief came from, but it's been there for a long time) that you should not wash your hair in the tub-water if there is bubble bath or bath salts or any other fun bath-supplements in the water. Something about those chemicals not being good for your hair. It seems like a legit concern to me. Ditto with submerging my face in that water. 

THEREFORE, as a result of Facts 1 & 2, you can understand my conundrum. They're sort of mutually exclusive. If I want to take a bubble bath, I can't wash my hair...meaning I must take a separate shower either before or after the bath. Both of these options are totally lame because if I take a shower BEFORE, then there's a shortage of hot water available for the actual bath, plus I get cold standing there waiting for the garden tub to fill up. If I take a shower AFTER, it basically undoes the relaxation of the bath, plus washes all the skin-softening-bubble bath-chemicals off my skin...I mean, by the time I'm out of the shower, it's like the bath never happened. 

So the third option (that I see) is to take a bath-product-free bath first and go ahead and wash my hair/face in the chemical-free water. This gets slight bonus points because I like going all the way underwater and pretending I'm a mermaid swishing my hair around. It gets points deducted, though, because with no bubbles or anything, you have to see the water turn slightly gray and icky and try to convince yourself that it's because of your shampoo and not because you're a really gross person. So then after the hair is washed, I let half of the water drain back out of the tub, while running the faucet to get the water hot again (for some reason, even though it probably hasn't been 10 minutes since piping hot water was coming out of the faucet...it's back to ice cold and will take 5 minutes of running to heat up again. LAME). This means the tub is about half-full of coldish water, which makes for a very sad few minutes. Once the water warms up again, I plug the tub again and let the hot water fill it up while mixing in my bubble bath or whatever. I can then commence with the 'relaxation' portion of bathing that is the whole reason I started this ridiculous procedure anyway. However, by this point, half the time I'm bored/frustrated with the whole thing anyway and kinda ready to just be done. But I relax for a few minutes anyway because dangit, that's what the whole point was.

So last night while going through this whole admittedly ridiculous process, I was like I wonder how OTHER people do their bath routine? Because most of my routines in life...I'm confident that they're the right way. Maybe not for everyone, but at least for me- I know I'm doing it the right- and most efficient- way. But bathing? Definitely not. So I come to you, dear friends of the world wide web, asking that you bestow your experience and advice on me. What's the most efficient and relaxing way to bathe? What should I do? Is it actually wrong to wash your hair in bubble bath water? Have I been believing a lie my whole life?

As a reward for sharing your wisdom, I will share with you ONE thing I'm pretty sure about:

Source

This Aveeno Soothing Bath Treatment is pretty dang awesome when you have super itchy and dry skin like me. It won't win any points for smelling fruity or being bubbly, but for getting your constantly-itchy skin to calm the heck down? Major points. Worth dealing with the hassles of bathing for those few precious minutes of relief. So, there ya go. 

[PS. Ha- after re-reading this before I hit 'publish,' I realized that the last paragraph totally sounded like an advertisement or a 'sponsored post'. It's not. I have approximately 2918 bath products on the side of my tub, and this one just happens to be the best for itchy skin. No one asked me to say that. So...just FYI. :)]

So help me out, wise friends. Some of you seem to be veteran bath-takers. Bestow your wisdom on me and teach me your ways.