Here’s a no-brainer: If you could tweak your beauty regimen to clear the clutter out of your bathroom cabinets, spend less time getting ready in the morning, and trim some dollars from your budget -- all the while helping the environment -- would you be willing to give it a go?

Well, all that’s possible by following a concept we’ve become very familiar with: multitasking. Choosing products that perform double -- or triple -- duty is a way to make your beauty regimen more eco-conscious, says Jenny Rushmore, global sustainability leader for Procter & Gamble’s beauty and grooming division. The three R’s of sustainability -- reduce, reuse, recycle -- is a catchy reminder of what our priorities should be when it comes to cutting back on waste. “What this means is that recycling is what you do after you’ve already reduced and reused,” says Rushmore. “It’s better not to buy bottled water than to recycle the water bottle, and that same idea applies to beauty products. Reducing the number of products you buy is the best place to start a more eco-friendly beauty regimen.”

Here are seven hardworking beauty products you can easily find on your drugstore shelves.

1. Shampoo-conditioners
These two-in-one formulas will help speed up your showers -- saving an average of 5 gallons of water for every minute you cut from your shower time -- and cut down on packaging. Best of all: Now you can find these double-duty wonders in formulas customized to add volume to fine hair, smooth frizz-prone locks or manage curls.

2. Razors With Built-in Shave Gel
All you’ll need to add is water to get your legs silky smooth. As convenient as that is at home, it’s especially helpful when it comes to getting a close shave when you’re traveling. No need to pack the shave cream: Simply toss a razor with a shave gel bar in your toiletry case.

3. Self-tanning Moisturizing Lotions
Add a glow to your skin as you soften and hydrate it -- without the orange streaks that conventional self-tanners can sometimes leave. To maximize multitasking, choose a facial or body formula with SPF 15.

4. Makeup Foundation With Benefits
Slash your beauty budget and your get-beautiful prep time with a foundation that also treats your skin with anti-acne or anti-aging ingredients, such as youth-restoring antioxidants, peptides, retinols and breakout-busters like salicylic acid.

5. Moisturizing Body Washes
Try these lathering marvels and you can step right out of the shower and into your clothes without having to pause to slather on a hydrating lotion. (Okay, a few seconds spent patting yourself dry with a towel is advisable.) Some advanced products also contain anti-aging ingredients that make fine lines less visible by improving skin’s elasticity, tone and texture.

6. Facial and Body Moisturizers With Sunscreen
With broad-spectrum SPF 15 or 30, these lotions provide the daily sun-shielding protection that dermatologists recommend. You can find formulas that are fast-absorbing and have a lightweight texture, so you’ll never be tempted to skip the sunscreen again. In fact, some facial UV moisturizers are so silky they provide the perfect canvas for your foundation, allowing you to skip the primer. Another step saved!

7. Baby Wipes
If these aren’t in your beauty arsenal, they should be. Unscented, hypoallergenic wipes are a gentle, portable and low-priced makeup remover that will baby your sensitive skin. Cold-weather tip: Stash a packet in your purse or toiletry case during cold and flu season so it’ll be within easy reach for on-the-go hand cleansing.

In winter, the combination of indoor central heating with weather that’s bitter cold or soggy wet can turn hair into a frizzy, brittle mess of static, or a dull, limp mop immune to your styling attempts. And that’s on the good days.

Winter hair is so universally vexing that international teams of scientists have studied how hair reacts to varieties of winter weather, indoors and out. In laboratories and in salons, experts are learning how to formulate helpful products and alter styling and grooming routines to counteract cold-weather extremes.

What these pros have discovered is that hair that’s been chemically treated becomes particularly vulnerable to changes in humidity and temperature. According to expert John Gray, author of The World of Hair, your tresses have a built-in conditioning system called the f-layer. This microscopic coating is like a good pair of ski pants for your hair: It makes the strands naturally water-repellent, smooth and silky. Dyes and straightening treatments, however, remove that protective coating.

 “Once that happens,” says Gray, “the ability to control hair’s water content, which is critical to the way hair looks and behaves, is grossly affected.” As a result, a day of snow or rain can make your hair heavy and unmanageable.

Don’t panic: Even damaged hair can regain its youthful luster with the right handling.

Tweak the Way You Shampoo
Hair needs sufficient interior moisture to counteract winter’s dry indoor air and to protect it against cold or humidity outside. Charles Ifergan, a stylist and salon owner in Chicago -- a city with one of the harshest winters in the country -- suggests using a slightly lesser amount of shampoo from December through March to avoid stripping hair of natural oils. “And don’t rinse out the conditioner as hard. It’s OK to leave a little bit in for extra moisture,” he says.

Dial Down the Hair Dryer
When it’s freezing outside, it’s tempting to blast your soaking-wet hair with your blow-dryer on its hottest setting, if only to warm up the bathroom. That’s a fast route to damage. “You basically end up boiling the water inside your hair,” says Gray. Instead, towel-dry your hair, then give it time to dry on its own. When it’s just slightly damp, apply heat-protecting styling products and use your blow-dryer on a medium to low setting.

Don’t Make Hat Hair Worse
Smashing hair under hats and scarves not only flattens your locks, but the trapped heat can cause the scalp to perspire, making the roots feel unclean, says Gray. That flat, greasy hair often leads to more frequent washing and heat styling. Hat hair may be unavoidable, but you can prevent further damage to the exposed dry ends by brushing them gently and making them the first place where you apply conditioner. 

Step up Your Conditioning Routine
“Every couple of weeks, use an intensive conditioning mask,” says Ifergan. And, after you blow-dry you hair, rub a tiny amount of conditioning oil between your palms, then apply it lightly to your hair as a finishing product.

Stop Static
Ultra-dry, cold weather and central heating can increase static electricity so much that hair becomes frizzy and style-resistant. Products with “smart” ingredients, such as polyquaternium-10 in shampoo and stearamidopropyl dimethylamine in conditioner, control static by depositing their helpful molecules only where needed, like on dry ends. Switching from a nylon or synthetic brush to one with boar bristles will also de-electrify runaway strands, says Ifergan.

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that you need to cleanse, nourish and protect your skin. But some skin care facts haven’t made it into conventional wisdom. Top dermatologists share five ways to tweak your skin care regimen to get your most radiant complexion ever.

Moisturize Frequently  
To fight acne, don’t forget the moisturizer, which improves skin’s ability to keep bacteria out and water in. Why is water important? Flaky, dehydrated skin is irritated skin, which sends distress signals to our immune cells, distracting them from healing the inflammation that can accompany acne. Making things worse, the blemish-prone often overcleanse to the point of dryness, which adds more dead skin cells to those already clogging the pores.

To properly keep skin hydrated, wear a light, oil-free, water-based moisturizer. For extra oomph, choose one laced with a zit-fighting ingredient such as salicylic acid, benzoyl peroxide, retinol (nighttime use only) or azelaic acid.

Find the Right Retinoid
Vitamin A creams, known as retinoids, are scientifically proven to help unclog pores, smooth wrinkles, lighten brown spots and improve skin texture. The only hitch is that retinoids in prescription-strength form (which deliver the fastest results) can irritate the skin of first-time users and cause stinging, redness and peeling.  

Acclimate your skin by using a retinoid just twice a week, with the eventual goal of applying it every night.  Or build tolerance by starting with a less potent, over-the-counter form of retinoid: look for the words retinol, retinal, retinaldehyde or retinyl palmitate on the label. Pumped into gels, serums and creams, these ingredients take a little longer to show benefits -- up to six months. But by then you’ll be more than ready to graduate to their Rx cousins.

Load up on Vitamins
Like an alphabet soup, vitamins A, B, C and E call out from the labels of skin-care products. These antioxidant vitamins are naturally present in our skin, but they need replenishment to keep our collagen from being gobbled up by free radicals caused by UV light and pollution. Each excels at something: vitamin A builds collagen and quells enzymes that destroy it; vitamin B (which includes B12, B3 or niacinamide, and folic acid) reduces inflammation, water loss and uneven pigmentation; vitamin C protects against UV damage and improves skin texture; and vitamin E is an emollient that fights redness. 

To cover all the bases, make your products multitask by using a serum containing some of the vitamins and a moisturizer pumped with the others.

Look for Botanical Ingredients
By switching to cleansers and creams containing certain key botanicals, those of us with sensitive skin (a propensity to become blotched, red and irritated) might never have to reach for another tube of greasy hydrocortisone to calm an angry eruption. The top six botanical ingredients that get the nod from doctors because of their anti-inflammatory, antiredness and anti-irritant properties include: colloidal oatmeal, feverfew, licorice, aloe vera, chamomile and turmeric. Not only are these safe for sensitive skin and sufferers of chronic conditions like rosacea, their daily use will help prevent future flare-ups.

Say Yes to Ceramides
A natural component of the top layer of our skin, ceramides are fats that act like mortar to the bricks (cells) that form a wall to keep water inside the skin. When this brick wall is well-preserved, the result is a glowing, well-hydrated complexion. During the winter and as we age, ceramide levels start to drop, shrinking the mortar and causing dry, inflamed skin. Fortunately, we can replenish lost ceramides with synthetic or natural forms, both of which are found in moisturizers. To get your money’s worth, look for ceramides in the top half of the ingredients list.

Curly haired women no longer have to envy their straight-tressed sisters. Today, curly hair -- in all its beautiful textures -- is getting the attention and products it deserves to look its magnificent best.

New research is helping manufacturers develop products that address curly hair’s unique characteristics. For example, French researchers discovered that African hair is drier, slower growing, and more likely to fray at the tips and split lengthwise. Hair care scientists have also determined that the twists and turns of curly hair bend the shaft’s scalelike covering, making strands rough and difficult to control.

For hair that’s curl-luscious, follow this advice from the pros:

ID Your Curl
“Think of texture in terms of how your hair is shaped -- kinky, curly or wavy,” says Anthony Dickey, who operates a New York salon devoted to textured hair and is the author of Hair Rules!: The Ultimate Hair-Care Guide for Women with Kinky, Curly, or Wavy Hair. Kinky hair has the tightest curl pattern and is often frizzy. Curly hair has looser twists and turns, while wavy hair exhibits a softer, more open curl.

Treat Your Dominant Hair Type
You may have curly hair -- but only in a patch at the back of your head. Or maybe your kinky hair calms to a gentler curl along the sides. It’s wise to cater to your dominant type, says Domingo Serquinia, co-owner of Paint Shop, a Los Angeles hair and nail salon. If portions of your hair are curly on an otherwise tame head of hair, Serquinia recommends using a temporary straightener, such as the new keratin treatments that many salons offer. Stylists can moderate the amount of temporary straightener to add manageability to curls, not flatten them. If your hair is kinky rather than curly, skip the keratin and opt for paste-formula relaxers that can be applied precisely to new growth.

Choose a Product Line for Your Hair Type
Curly, kinky and wavy hair need extra hydration because their winding structure impedes the flow of scalp oils along the strand. Product lines formulated for curly hair, including those designed specifically for women of color, contain additional moisturizing ingredients that your thirsty tresses will drink right up.

Don’t Skip Regular Cuts
Curly hair may grow slowly, but it still needs trimming every three months to keep the ends fresh, says Serquinia. But he advises, “You don’t want your stylist to use a razor or cut into the ends, because that can fray ends and add to the frizz.”

Keep Your Curls Cool
If your hair has been processed with chemical straighteners or permanent-wave solutions, steer clear of high-heat styling tools like flatirons, suggests Miami, Fla., dermatologist Heather Woolery-Lloyd. That’s because your hair may already have blisterlike bubbles from the processing, and heat can cause those bubbles to break or split, leading to damaged, distressed locks.

Handle With Care
Because of their lower tensile strength, some types of kinky hair have decreased resistance to repeated brushing, says Woolery-Lloyd. Avoid vigorous brushing and work carefully through knots and tangles to avoid breakage. After shampooing and conditioning your hair, remove wetness with a gentle squeeze. Apply a styling product to still-wet hair to protect the cuticle and retain the hair’s natural curl.

Think Breeze, Not Blast
To get salon results at home, without having to master the tricky two-handed round brush technique, look for a blow-dryer with a wide-tooth comb attachment and use it on a medium setting. Or, suggests Dickey, use an old-school portable hood dryer that lets hair dry in place with minimal tangling. The gentler airflow of the portable dryers is less disruptive to the curl pattern than the typical blow-dryer. Bonus: Your hands will be free to apply your makeup.

While many of us are pretty religious about making hair appointments, we tend to let things slide when it comes to facials. All that coddling with lotions and potions seems so indulgent, it’s easy to pooh-pooh the results of a facial. “A facial will keep your skin healthy and hydrated and also protect it from the environment,” says dermatologist Howard Murad, M.D., associate clinical professor of medicine at UCLA. “And if you have specific problems, like uneven pigmentation or breakouts, the appropriate facial can really make a difference.”

What to Expect During Your Facial
A thorough facial typically consists of seven steps:

1. A rigorous cleansing with a product for your skin type (normal, dry, oily, combination or sensitive)

2. Skin analysis through a brightly lit magnifying lamp

3. A deep steam-cleaning with a mechanical or chemical exfoliant

4. Extraction of blackheads and whiteheads

5. Massage to stimulate circulation and relax facial muscles

6. A mask targeted to your skin type

7. Application of toners and protective creams

What a Facial Does Best

• Exfoliates: When dead skin cells hang on, they prevent our skin from reflecting light, making our complexion appear rough and discolored. To remove that dull, ashy layer, the aesthetician will choose the best exfoliant for your skin type, either a gritty scrub or a smooth chemical agent, such as an alpha or a beta hydroxy acid or a papaya enzyme.
• Extracts: With the top layer of dead skin cells cleared away and the contents of the pores softened by steam, the facialist uses sterile tools to extract the debris with just the right amount of pressure.
• Lightens: If uneven pigmentation and brown spots are a concern, the facialist can apply a mask, peel or serum containing proven skin lighteners such as vitamin C, licorice extract, pomegranate extract, kojic acid or arbutin.
• Hydrates: When the top layer of skin contains its full complement of water, it looks firm, soft and supple. To max out our water-holding capabilities, the facialist uses “steam, humectants and moisturizing agents, which plump up the skin and pop out the wrinkles by infusing those receded areas with moisture,” says aesthetician Stacy Cox, owner of Pampered People spa in Valley Village, California.

When to Schedule a Facial
Book your facial a few days or even a week before a big event to allow any irritation to subside. A good facial shouldn’t irritate your skin to the point where it triggers inflammation, but there’s always the chance of residual redness from extractions or light peels.

The few days before the start of the menstrual cycle can be a tender time for some women. If you find your nerve endings are more sensitive to pain or discomfort at this time of the month, it’s best to reschedule a facial or ask your aesthetician to lay off the extractions.

Thin-skinned? Proceed With Caution
Because sensitive skin is by definition finely textured, with a thin epidermis and blood vessels that are close to the surface, an experienced facialist will follow what Cox calls the “less heat, less time, less product” rule. That translates into not over-steaming the face, using lukewarm instead of hot towels, exfoliating with gentle enzymes instead of a strong glycolic acid, performing fewer extractions and using a hydrating mask.