don't like gloves, want clean hands on Mondays

Novice gardener back (6 weeks into gardening in the new house)... OK, silly question - I love gardening with my hands. I love the feel of the dirt - makes me more of a part of the process and gloves feel clumsy.

Here's the dilemma - what do no-glovers do to have clean hands on Mondays? On a whim, I've slathered my hands with a couple of layers of lotion - no idea whether this will work.

I've experimented with coppery-brown polish to hide the rest of the dirt on my nails. I don't like polish, but my workplace is fairly business-like, and while I'll hit the grocery store looking like "Frannie from the Farm" - work is a slightly different matter. Scrub scrub, Sunday night and I still see garden-grime as late as Tuesday.

A couple of tried-and-true suggestions:

Make sure you KEEP your hands well-lotioned ALL THE TIME. It's those dry cracks that dirt tends to get in and wreak havoc.

Scrape your nails over a bar of soap before you garden. It doesn't feel great to have soap under your fingernails, but it will help keep out the dirt.

I found a good handbrush at Pier 1 a couple years back - it has short bristles on one side and longer, soft bristles on the other. It does a decent job of cleaning my cuticles and knuckles.

And if all else fails, learn to like gloves when you're doing the dirtiest jobs like weeding. That's where I tend to get the most ground-in dirt, and I've learned to simply put on gloves first, and my hands stay much nicer.

A good fingernail brush helps with the grime under the nails. Have you tried soaking your hands in warm soapy water? When I do dishes with Ivory liquid dish soap, my hands come out nice and clean, too!

Boraxo handsoap - known as "working kid" soap around here - will get out more dirt than anything I have ever run into. Lava works, if you can't find Boraxo.

Before I go out to do any gardening, I always rub a wee bit of washing-up liquid into my hands. The dirt doesn't seem to get into so many crevices then.
But to get the paws clean again, I always give them a good scrub with a medium-hard short-bristled brush, then jump into the shower and wash my hair about three times. That gets all the rest of the dirt out from cracks etc.
Well it works for me... :-)

All the best

Wintermoor

I try to schedule my bathroom scrubbing, dishwashing and general cleaning so it occurs after I come in from gardening. And I don't hesitate to use a little liquid bleach in the scrub water. If I wash dishes and then clean the sink and bathtub, it's almost guaranteed I will soak away stains. Now if I could just grow real nails.

I hate scrubbing my hands as much as I dislike doing dishes. I use thin cotton gloves. They are usualy sold as inserts to outer gloves. I can dig in the dirt and feel it on my fingers without the dirt getting packed under my nails. Now if someone can discover a coating to go over dishes............ooooooooooooooooooooooowww darn that is called paper plates!

Aimee - you must be superwoman. After a day in the yard, I end up hobbling into the house like a 99-yr old arthritic. Doug and I are still in the honeymoon with the house stage - so we're out there every weekend, pulling, tilling, planting, mulching. Towards the end of the day, we're crawling in - wondering if the elderly couple across the street who watch out their window are moderating like they would at a racetrack: "Sandra's in front, oh, she stumbled - up comes Doug, he's moving slowly, oh no - he stops." >;-)

I never thought I'd see the day where I spend more time outside on the weekends than anything else.

The lotion worked and so did the soap under the nails. I might try Aimee's tactic next week if I have energy. I'll leave one dish, one sink - wonder if it will get done?

The bathroom scrubbing with bleach and the hair washing in the shower gets mine clean every time and I _hate_gloves!!

A little bleach in the dishwater usually does the trick for me! When I had my 1st child, he was in intensive care & we had the "scrub up" before we could hold him. We used the little brushes with soap in them just like the doctors use. My husband is a service tech & his hands are usually black from grease & grime, I had never seen his hands clean except when our 1st son was born.

I have thick cuticle and never wear gloves. It was always a problem to get the grass and weed stains off before going back to work on Monday. Someone told me to use spray and Wash stain stick and a stiff nail brush. It works!!!!!!! Is is also the best thing I've found to take the winter black off white plactic lawn chairs and works great on my white leather Nikes too. Try it, you'll like it!!! Lou

I know this sounds silly but I find a piece of window blind (I use them for markers) cleans the loose dirt under my nails better than any file.. in a pinch I have used the little plastic tags that are sticking in pots that U buy. As for the hands I have used most of the above.
Sugar