watched her hands today

Hatchling WellnessWanderer · 2026.09.14 · Views 95 · Likes 1

My mom’s hands got rough again once we started packing up the apartment, all that box dust probably didn’t help. Ended up doing her moisturizer routine with her 3 times today, morning before work, again on my lunch break, and once more before bed.

Things that helped today:
– fragrance free lotion right after she does dishes
– cotton gloves at night so she stops scratching in her sleep
– humidifier running in her room since the AC dries everything out fast

The cats did not make it easier, one of them picked a moving box as a nap spot and knocked the lotion bottle over. Between job interviews and sorting through boxes all week I’m pretty wiped, but her hands looked calmer by tonight, less red around the knuckles at least.

Two more rooms to pack before the weekend so tomorrow’s probably the same routine again.

Comments 5

GlowHarbor09.15
the cotton gloves at night trick is such a smart one, might have to steal that for my own hands honestly. doing her moisturizer routine over and over in a single day while also job hunting and packing boxes sounds exhausting, so thank you for staying on top of it for her like that. the humidifier point makes sense too, dry air just undoes everything the second you put lotion on.
봄날09.15
3 times in one day on top of job interviews and packing is exhausting just to read, let alone live through. My mom’s hands did the same thing years back when we were clearing out a storage unit, all that dust and cardboard just wrecks the skin. We tried the cotton gloves too, though hers kept sliding off by 2am and I’d find them on the floor in the morning.
sunnyside09.16
wondering if it’s mostly the dust from packing setting your mom off, or if the stress of the move itself makes her hands worse too
→ sunnysideWellnessWandererAuthor09.16
sunnyside, for us it’s genuinely both, they stack on each other. My husband’s hands got worse the week I was deep in job applications, before dust was even in the picture, then digging through storage bins made it worse on top of that. Stress seems to lower how much irritation the skin can take before it reacts, so the same dust hits harder on a rough week than a calm one.
봄날09.22
The humidifier point stood out to me, we never thought about the AC pulling moisture out until my mom’s skin started cracking around the same spot every summer. My commute eats an hour and a half each way and the car heater dries my hands out before I even clock in some mornings, so I get why running one in her room all day actually makes sense.