Not SAD

I was not too worried about getting SAD (seasonal affective disorder) in the Vermont winters because honestly, I have reverse seasonal affective disorder lol, where I get super depressed during summer. All of my friends know that Easter is my least favorite holiday, and it has nothing to do with the event itself (it’s a beautiful holiday, full of hope and inspiration), and the food is fantastic too, it’s just that it’s the harbinger of summer.

So my original plan was to buy a second home in Vermont that would be for summer use only, but as I’ve blogged about before, once we got here, we loved it so much that we decided we wanted to be here full-time. So this will be our first winter, I’ve lived in New York City and New England before so I’m no stranger to winter, but I wanted to list a few of my winter struggles (even though I love it) and what I do to combat them.

So my hair and skin look fantastic up here in winter, no frizz, no grease no humidity. My trick in Ft. Lauderdale for hot summer nights was to take a bath or shower and use Gold Bond medicated lotion (in the green bottle) and get in bed with a fan blowing directly on me. Add in a popsicle and it was soooo refreshing! But for here, you have to take a different approach, it all still involves going to bed though.

Up here, my secret trick is space heaters. They are so efficient nowadays that they don’t use much power, you have to be super careful with them, plug them directly into an outlet, not a power strip, and make sure they’re not around anything flammable (or really anything at all). I keep a small one in my bathroom, and while I’m running a bath, I close the bathroom doors and turn the space heater on. I let it run for 5 minutes or so, keep the doors shut and when I come in, the bathroom is toasty warm. I also keep one next to my desk of course during the day. And then when I get out of the shower and my skin is still damp, I use regular Gold Bond lotion (truly, I can’t say enough about moisturizing!). It’s thick and rich and combats itching better than anything. And then lastly, for my cuticles, which can get super dry, I buff them off with a nail file and then slather with Vaseline and then I just pop on cotton gloves I get a Dollar Tree. Boom! In the morning, soft hands!

There are so many things you can do to combat sad and winter problems like itchy, flaky skin, I’ll be posting more about what I do to get by these are just a few tips that really work for me!