Maybe the next answer isn't a stronger cream

The Solen Base Journal

I spent years buying the next tube up. The night I lined them all up to decide which one to bin, I finally noticed what none of them had ever changed.

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.

I bought the stronger one.

That's always how it starts. The last tube didn't have enough in it, so this one will. I read every review. I checked the back. I paid more than I wanted to, because this one was going to be the one.

This is the drawer it went into. I took that photo the night I sat on the bathroom floor and decided to throw one of them away, and couldn't decide which, because every one of them had cost money and every one of them had worked for a bit.

The urea one. The thick balm that smells of nothing. The Vaseline. A pumice stone. A metal file. A foot mask I used once and meant to use again.

If you've got a drawer like this, you already know the rest. But I'm going to tell it anyway, because I'd never said it out loud before and it turned out to matter.

How it always went

Shower. Towel. Sit on the side of the bath and rub it in properly, heels first.

Wash my hands. Then tiptoe to bed. Up on my toes across the landing, so none of it touched the carpet.

Then the waiting. Sitting on the edge of the bed with my feet hanging off the side, scrolling my phone, not reading anything, giving it a few minutes to sink in before I dared put my feet under the duvet.

Then the sock. A cotton one, to keep it off the sheets.

I hate sleeping in socks. I always have. So most nights I'd wake up at some point and pull it off without really waking, and find it in the morning, balled up at the bottom of the bed.

And before that, I'd roll over and my heel would catch on the duvet. That dry little scratch. My heels are so rough they feel like Velcro against the blankets.

After all that.

"Some would work well but the results would last a few days at the most."

From a review of another brand's heel sock. I could have written it.

Every tube went the same way. A few good nights. Then a tired night, when I couldn't face the walk and the waiting and the sock. Then a second tired night. Then the tube went back in the drawer with the others.

Sometimes I'd give up and book a pedicure. Lovely for a few days. Then, not even a week later, my feet felt rough again.

That's the bit that wears you down. Not the dry skin. The going back. It's very hard not to decide that it's just me. That my skin is the problem. That some people just have feet like this and I'm one of them.

The thing none of them changed

That night on the bathroom floor, I lined the tubes up in a row to pick one for the bin. And I noticed something I'd never once thought about.

Every single thing in that drawer was a change to what goes in the tub. Stronger. Thicker. Cleverer. More percent.

Not one of them changed what happens after I put it on.

I've started calling it the After, because it needs a name. The After is the tiptoe across the landing. The waiting on the edge of the bed. The sock I'd pull off in my sleep. The mark on the carpet by my side of the bed that I pretend not to see.

The After is where every one of those tubes died. Not in the first week, when I was keen. On the tired Tuesday, when the After felt like too much and I just got into bed.

And the After is where some of the cream went, too. I can't tell you how much. I'm not a scientist and I'm not going to pretend. But the next morning I turned that balled up sock the right way out, and there was a dull grey patch across the heel, slightly stiff, where something greasy had dried into the cotton.

I wasn't the first to notice. Once I started looking, people had been saying it for years, in reviews of every kind of heel product:

"I feel like all the lotion I put on just soaks into my socks and wastes it."

"By morning, I felt as if nothing had been applied."

Maybe the sock soaked up most of it. Maybe it didn't. I honestly couldn't prove it either way. What I could see was that the whole routine had been built around a moment of the day I hate, a walk I have to do on tiptoe, and a sock I can't sleep in. No wonder it never lasted.

Maybe I never needed a stronger cream. Maybe the cream never got a fair chance, because the After was so annoying I kept dropping it.

The one time of day I never skip

Here's what I worked out, sitting there.

There is one moment in every single day when I put something on my feet without thinking about it. I don't tiptoe. I don't wait. I don't need reminding. I've never once skipped it because I was tired.

Putting my socks on in the morning.

If the cream went on then, the After would just disappear. No walk across the landing. No waiting on the edge of the bed. No sock at the bottom of the bed. The cream would go on, the sock would go on, the shoes would go on, and I'd be out of the door.

The only catch is that a normal sock is made to go in a shoe. It isn't made to go over a layer of cream. I'd tried that. It just felt like wearing a greasy sock to work.

A sock made to go over cream

That's when I came across Solen Base.

It's a sock made to go over cream. They call it the Day Sock. Cotton on the outside, so it looks like any grey sock, and it's closed toe, so it's invisible under shoes. Lined with gel on the inside, which is the side that sits against the cream.

You use your own cream. That was the bit that got me. I don't have to buy cream number six. The good one I already paid for is sitting right there in the drawer. Nothing is soaked into the sock, and there's no fragrance.

This is what my morning would look like:

Sit on the edge of the bed. Cream on, heels first. Day Sock on. Shoes on. Out the door.

Each pair lasts 3 to 6 months, and you give your feet a rest between wears. The kit has three Day Socks, so laundry day doesn't stop anything, and there's a Night Sleeve in it too, open at the toes, for the evenings you want it. It all goes in the washing machine at 40 degrees, in a mesh bag.

The questions I asked before I believed any of it

I've tried socks over cream. It didn't work.
Me too. But what I hated was sleeping in them, and a cotton sock over cream just felt greasy. This one isn't for bed, and the inside isn't cotton.

Isn't it just an expensive sock?
I thought that too. A normal sock is cotton against your skin. This one is gel against the cream and cotton against your shoe. Whether that's worth it is exactly what the guarantee is for.

Will it make my cream work better?
They don't claim that, and I liked them more for it. What happens to my heels is still down to the cream and how often I actually use it. The sock is there to make the how often easier.

What I actually want

I'm not after new feet overnight. I don't believe in overnight any more.

I want bedtime to be bedtime again. I want to get into bed without planning it around my heels. I want to walk across the landing on my whole foot like a normal person. And I want the cream I already own to actually get used, instead of joining the others in the drawer.

This is the first thing in a long time that's aimed at that, instead of at the tube.

If your bathroom drawer looks anything like mine, have a look at how the Day Sock works. There's a fourteen night guarantee, and you won't need to buy another cream to try it.