What Germs May Come: How to Stop Bacterial Breakouts

Good skin starts with proper diet, a habitual fitness routine, and a genetically blessed hand of hormonal cards, but basic beauty hygiene plays a huge role in the external health of your complexion too. We've covered the gamut of sanitation, but decided a shorter, more concise list of the basics was necessary. For skin's sake, keep it clean!

VIRAL PHONES

Germs don't play favorites, and whether you're toting a sleek smartphone or the Nokia of yesteryear, bacteria is building up on your mobile as you speak. The area around the microphone is particularly nasty, but nothing a daily antibacterial cloth wipe down won't fix.

SINGLE-CELLED SHADES

Like our cellular friends, sunglasses harbor a lot of skin buildup and sweat around the bridge of the nose, and the mere fact of a physical item pressed to your skin is a recipe for clogged pores and blackheads. As above, be sure to give your glasses a daily spritz of lens cleaner, or wash with soap and water.

BACTERIAL BLENDERS

Your favorite brush holds pigment, but an unwashed, unloved tool also harbors a lot of oil debris. Are once-a-week-brush-washing sessions too much to ask for? Same goes for hair and cleansing brushes—your scalp is just as susceptible as the skin on your face.

LIVING LINENS

Come bedtime, a dirty pillowcase is a blanket of bacteria waiting to snuggle right into your face; not sweet dreams by any standards. Keep a laundered backup in the wings and change your set (and your sheets!) every one or two weeks. It's that easy.

MICROBIAL MAKEUP TESTERS

Do we even have to broach the subject of beauty's bona fide petri dish? Avoid using cosmetic testers altogether if you can, but if you simply must, stick to applicators, keep it to the back of your hand, and spritz the area with rubbing alcohol immediately after. Keep your at-home skin regimen just as hygienic by using a plastic spatula—not your fingers—to scoop out creams. Which leads us to the worst one of them all...

DIGITS OF DOOM

We're subconsciously touching our face all day—at the office, in the car, or playing in front of the mirror. Guess what—your hands also come in contact with everything else too, most notably that public door knob. Do you really need thousands of random stranger's microbial waste near your face? Stash away a pocket sanitizer and try to minimize your finger-to-face habit.