The truth is, New Years resolutions are usually tossed down the drain sooner or later, only to be brought to life the next year. So let’s make these more than resolutions. Let’s make them life-long decisions. Let’s make them habits. Once you turn something into a habit, it’s so much easier to go through with. The same goes for your beauty rituals. If you stop thinking about them and just do them, life will be so much easier!

Give Your Hair a Break

We know, you need that second hair wax and you just can do without the extra strong gel that keeps your locks looking like a water drenched mermaid’s. Still, we’re here to give you the hard facts. Your hair isn’t going to just get better by itself. And once you ruin its structure with one to many bleaching and dyeing sessions you will find that, no matter how much moisture you apply, it just doesn’t look the same.

Turn your hair into a temple. Don’t wash it each day if you want it to look and feel healthy and glowing. When you do wash it, find a shampoo and a conditioner that have no parabens. Apply a natural mask each week and resist using too many products.

Take Your Skin to a Different Level

The skin is your outer shell, your armour against toxic agents (and people). It’s time to tell your skin how you really feel. And, while the skin isn’t usually very vocal, it does appreciate gifts of care like serums and moisturizers. In winter, give it that rich cream it needs. Peel your skin and gently scrub it from time to time. No, that doesn’t mean “when you remember doing it”. It means constantly, incessantly and with great dedication.

As for the golden advice that involves the religious use of sunscreen, it still stands tall and proud. Use a SPF moisturizer every time you have to brave the outside world, and that includes overcast days and chilly autumns.

Revitalize Your Hands

We often forget about our hands, yet we use them for almost everything nowadays. Our fingers run rapidly over the keyboard, writing confirmation e-mails, chatting with friends or making up lists, yet we often forget about hand cream when we re-supply our beauty cabinet.

This year (and the year that comes after it and so on), think of your hands like you think about your face. Along with the neckline, they’re the three most important parts of your exterior body. The hands are always under constant pressure from the sun, so use a special moisturizer all year round, use gloves whenever possible and simplify your nail routine. All that colorful polish and adhesives have done more bad than good to your nails, so just forget about them for a while.

Get on the Organic Train

If your skin standards are high, then you won’t need telling twice. We use more beauty products than we imagine — shampoo, conditioner, shower gel, body foams, skin lotions, scrubs for our face and our heels and our hands, hair mousse, hair dye, serums, eye cream and the list goes on and on and on. Making sure what we use doesn’t have a negative effect on our health on the long run is, therefore, a smart thing to do.

If we could make one New Year’s resolution only, switching to organic would be it, because it includes all of these products that we use on a regular basis. Organic companies aren’t just the underdog anymore, and we can find high standard, exclusive products done the right way too.

New Year’s resolutions are tricky, but planning a new beauty routine can be fun, so don’t be afraid of new decisions and make them your own. Happy 2014!