If you’re a guy, you have to deal with the hair on your face — and elsewhere on your body too. But which method of man grooming for your facial hair is the easiest? Is shaving compatible with the minimalist lifestyle? Can you save time and effort by having stubble or a beard?
I’ve been considering this issue all my life, and I think I have some answers that will help you. Let’s look closely at the issue of man grooming and see what we can learn.
Forget The Hassles Of Shaving
For me, shaving on a regular basis has never really worked out very well. If I shave daily, my skin gets itchy and irritated. The blotchy redness this causes doesn’t look or feel good. I can shave if I skip several days between each time, but what’s the point of that?
And if I shave and then let it grow out for a week or two, I start to get bumps from ingrown hairs. Either my face doesn’t like to be shaved or there’s something about man grooming I don’t understand. Either way, I choose not to shave very often.
I admit that a clean shave feels good every now and then, but as it’s growing out I usually regret it. Plus, I don’t like to consider all the money I would spend over a lifetime on razors, shaving cream or shaving oil and post-shave treatments like aftershave and moisturizers if I shaved regularly. That’s not very simple or minimalist at all.
Beards Have Their Appeal
Sometimes, I go with a full beard. And notice that I said a “full beard” — not something that’s very carefully carved up and highly crafted. Most guys have a pleasing natural beard growth pattern, so there’s no reason to cut deep into the cheek line or define a very high neckline. Those things take time and effort and detract from the overall no-nonsense look a minimalist guy might find appealing.
Since I also like to a do a very minimal amount of manscaping, I choose a Philips Norelco Multigroom Series 9000, available through this Amazon affiliate link, for my beard grooming and my body grooming. This body groomer is designed to meet every need, and I like the idea of having one tool that can handle everything. Part of living a simple life is avoiding collecting too many tools that duplicate the same job.
With this body groomer, all your man grooming needs should be easy to handle. There are lots of attachments and settings so that you can find just the right tool and setting for your unique needs. When I have a beard, I like to let it grow a bit long. After all, growing it is simpler than grooming it.
Stubble May Be Simplest Of All
Perhaps the easiest facial hair to maintain is stubble — which some people like to call scruff these days. And maintaining stubble doesn’t mean just not shaving for a few days. When you have the best stubble trimmer on the market, you can maintain a simple and consistent look day after day.
But what about not having too many tools? While I like the body groomer mentioned above for most things, I like using my Conair i-Stubble when I choose to have stubble for a while. It may not be very minimalist to have one of these when the body groomer above can actually do a decent job with stubble, but I like the results from the i-Stubble better. In fact, it works well enough that I can use it for just a couple of minutes every day to get the results I want.
And that’s easier than going over and over the same spots again and again with a trimmer that doesn’t do the job very well. It really pays to have the right tool for the right job, even if means having two trimmers. Consider that dealing with facial hair is something I do everyday, having two different tools isn’t all that bad.
Some Final Thoughts On Man Grooming
Ultimately, the decision on how to handle your man grooming is yours, of course. You have to decide how to deal with facial hair and with hair elsewhere on your body. No matter the decision you make, it makes sense to choose the right tools and keep the process as simple as possible.
While stubble is probably the easiest way to manage facial hair, there’s a certain appeal to being clean-shaven and to having a beard. And there’s nothing wrong with trying out a variety of options. You have your whole life to experiment, after all.
What’s important is that you stay true to your simple, minimalist ideals when you dealing with man grooming.
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