My morning coffee
There is nothing in the world I love more than a really good massage. I love being so blissfully relaxed on the table that I fall asleep, and that gentle snooziness that settles around the remainder of the day. I love how de-puffed and smooth I feel after, and I really, really love how deeply I sleep that night. Massages? Love them. Body scrubs? Not so keen.
Of course, there was one time when I went to The Aman (now The Lodhi) hotel spa to review their two hour and 12,000-rupee hammam treatment and was scrubbed down to my last layer of dermis by an incredible (and incredibly strong) therapist who left me feeling like a slinky, slippery silk sheet in the best possible way, but leaving aside that one episode, my memories of scrubs either involve awkward treatments where I’m wide awake and acutely uncomfortable, or ham-handed applications of St. Ives apricot scrub which is, let’s be honest, just not worth the mess in the shower. There were other, more luxurious run-in’s with tubs of Forest Essentials tamarind sugar scrub, which is some seriously super stuff, but one tub only gives me two or three full-body rubdowns, so the price stings.
"Yes to eating right, yes to drinking water, but I’m in the shower twice a day, every day, and nothing has transformed my skin more than this pot of goodness."
But I was compelled by vanity to continue in my quest for super-smooth skin, and while anyone who’s ever tried a fully DIY beauty routine knows, concocting your own products is rarely worth the effort (calm down ubtan diehards, I said ‘rarely’, not ‘never’), I really do think I’ve found the holy grail of at-home scrubs.
It is this simple:
Coconut milk + coffee grounds + sugar = done.
Add a couple of drops of essential oil if you want, swap the coconut milk for coconut oil if you’re super-dry… do what feels good, but use it every day (or every other day, lazy) and I promise your skin will be the happiest it’s ever been. Just make sure you rinse out the shower or tub once you’re done because the same stuff that makes your bum baby-smooth also makes the floor slippery as hell, and that newly buffed behind probably won’t do much to buffer your fall.
You need to add one part coconut milk to two parts (each) of coffee and sugar, but play with it to get the consistency you like. I like it to be a little drier so I can store extra batches in the fridge (the more runny it is, the quicker it goes off). I also use a hefty dollop of vanilla essential oil because yum. Every time I unscrew the jar it's like a coffee-vanilla aromabomb goes off.
Yes to eating right, yes to drinking water, yes to all of that and more, but I’m in the shower twice a day, every day, because I bookend my days with bathtime, and nothing has transformed scrub-time more than this pot of goodness. If all else fails for me, I’ll just sit on a beach somewhere brewing up batches of this magic scrub because it is so good, and so simple, that I’d wager my entire life on it.
