At Whole Foods, you can see a Purell dispenser that says, “Free of parabens.” Those words may provide comfort to anyone who doesn’t like parabens, but they only make me wonder what those wipes contain instead of parabens. All personal care products usually have to contain preservatives, unless they’re completely water-free (since microbes need water to live)—see a list of preservative-free products here. Anyway, I guess I’ve been thinking about preservatives—and…

I received a travel-friendly bottle of Amika Soulfood Nourishing Mask in a Sephora Summer Hair Sample Set, and it couldn’t have come a minute sooner. My hair has been feeling pretty dull and lackluster because of the humidity, but this hair mask helped revive it in just five minutes.

Do you ever see something that immediately jolts you back to an earlier time in your life? For me, Carmex Classic Lip Balm’s distinctive bumblebee-yellow metal tin will always be one of those things. The smell of it as well—a strange marriage of wax and camphor/Vick’s VapoRub—is forever ingrained in my brain. Growing up, my family always kept a few tins of Carmex distributed around the house. Carmex used to print the price on the label, and I remember seeing the price increase from…