Nail care: cuticle care, remover and more

The first thing here is polish remover, and the only big decision there is acetone vs non-acetone - I come down on the acetone side, but your mileage may vary. It used to be when I was a kid that polish remover only came in Cutex, but these days it seems like everybody pretty much uses one generic or another. I use Sally Beauty's. I do like the bottle type pictured on the left below, where the acetone pumps into a little indented place that you can put your cotton ball or pad into. I first saw this at my grocery store (Orchid is a house brand) but I've seen it from other brands too. I just refill it from my big SB bottle, though. And then I also have the Target jar-of-remover with the scrubby thing inside (this, if they haven't changed it) because it's great for glitter removal, but I refill it with generic acetone also.

I've been taking biotin for a while now and I do think it's beneficial. I did some poking around online about it lately and apparently there are arguments still going on about what it does exactly and how much to take (5000 mcg - or 5mg - which is what the bottle pictured is, is a large dose). But nobody I saw seems to seriously deny that it does something positive to the keratin in your nails & hair. (If you haven't taken it before, I would start with a small dose and see what happens. I actually didn't snap  when I ordered this bottle how big a dose it was. I've just been taking it every other day, at most, because of that.)

As far as cuticle stuff goes, I don't have one holy grail and honestly I even switch around between types - I do love my Badger Balm but I also like to use the regular liquid oils sometimes as well. I like roll-ons like the one below, but I also like the ones that come in regular polish-type bottles and go on with a regular polish-type brush. (I have an old one from Chick Polish that smells divine, but they're out of business so that won't do you any good. The one I have bought more recently is Pretty Serious and it's unscented - I think it's called Cute Cuticles Purity.)

Oh, I do know one thing that is scientifically true (so I have read, at least - I'm definitely no expert) about cuticle oils, and that's that the kind of oil matters. You can't just slap kitchen oil or any old cheap cuticle oil on your nails and be sure it's doing anything. The size of the molecule matters, as I understand it; a large molecule can't penetrate the nail bed - which ideally is what you want it to do. I'm pretty sure I remember that jojoba oil was one of the small ones, but there are others. The big molecules (like coconut oil) will soften outer layers but can't get down into the layers beneath. (This piece from Nails Magazine lists some others.)

(Badger Balm is probably the closest thing to a Holy Grail for me out of everything I've talked about the last few days. I don't use it exclusively but it is awesome.)