I timed one ordinary Tuesday. Nobody believed me until I did.

The Solen Base Journal

The emollient took eight minutes. The rest of it took all night. This is about the rest of it.

By Haider Jafri, founder · 6 minute read

A dramatised story. The routine, the objects and the quotes come from real posts and reviews we read while making Solen Base, and the people quoted were writing about other products, not ours. The narrator is a composite, not a customer.

My partner once said, very kindly, "It can't take that long."

I didn't argue. I just started writing the times down.

The note

I did it on a Tuesday, because Tuesday is nothing. No flare, no appointment, no special effort. Just an ordinary night with a wet wrap in it, the way my week has a few of them.

Out of the shower at five past nine. Emollient on at ten past, legs then feet, keeping it off the skin between my toes. Done by eighteen minutes past.

That's the part everyone pictures. Eight minutes. Fine.

Then the rest.

Running the tap until it's warm. Holding the socks under. Wringing them, not too wet, not too dry. Rolling the damp pair on slowly so they don't drag. The dry pair over the top. Into bed by twenty five to ten.

Awake at ten to eleven, feet cold, telling myself it'll settle. It didn't. Took them off at five to one. Greasy pile on the floor.

Twenty past seven the next morning, putting a wash on before work, because otherwise the socks sit there.

Eight minutes of skin care. The rest is admin.

I showed my partner the note. He read it twice and said, "Oh."

That's the thing about this. The part that matters, the emollient, is quick. I can do it in my sleep. What takes the evening is everything around it. The water, the wringing, the layering, the lying awake, the laundry. None of that is skin care. It's admin.

And I'm not the only one keeping count:

"The wet wrap therapy is a lot of time and effort."

"Since I have no life anyway, I am able to sit for hours at a time in wet socks."

"We struggled with 30 min."

Everyone in those threads knows exactly what to do. We're all just tired of doing it.

So I went through the note line by line

This is where it got useful. I went back through the times and asked of each line: is this skin care, or is this admin? And whose call is it?

The emollient: skin care. Mine. Keep it.

The wet wrap, on the nights it's been prescribed: that's the call of the people who look after my skin. When they say wet wrap, I wet wrap. Not up for debate.

But most of my nights aren't wet wrap nights. Most of them are ordinary. And on those ordinary nights, I'd been doing a watered down version of the same admin. Normal socks over the emollient, stiff by morning, into the wash. Or skipping it because I couldn't face even that.

So on the ordinary nights, which lines were actually needed?

The emollient. And something over it, so it stays on my feet and off the sheets. That was it. Everything else was habit borrowed from the wet wrap nights.

If you're not sure which of your nights are which, that's a question for your nurse or dermatologist. It was the right one for me.

What the note looks like now, in my head

This is what I want an ordinary Tuesday to say:

21.10 emollient. 21.18 one dry layer. 21.20 bed.

That's what led me to Solen Base.

One dry layer

It's a Night Sleeve. Cotton on the outside. Lined with gel on the inside, which is the side that sits against your emollient. Open at the toes, covers the heel.

Emollient on. Sleeve on. Bed. No tap, no wringing, no second pair.

You use your own emollient. There's no fragrance and nothing is soaked into the fabric. One sleeve in the wash at 40 degrees, in a mesh bag, instead of two pairs of socks. There's a Day Sock too, closed toe, for the mornings you do your feet before work.

What I want

My Tuesdays back. Not the whole evening. Just the admin.

I'll keep doing the emollient, and I'll keep doing the wet wraps when they're prescribed. I just want an ordinary night to be ordinary.

If you've ever wanted to write the times down, have a look at how the Night Sleeve works. The safety notes are on the page before you buy, and there's a fourteen night guarantee.