Shelf control

Your boyfriend’s 5-in-1 is the unlikely antidote to an exhausting beauty routine, says SIYA BHAMBWANI.

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THERE ARE TWO kinds of people in the world: those who pack a suitcase with everything they may possibly need—including a lint roller and a backup perfume—and those who pack 10 minutes before leaving with blind optimism and a small prayer that they have enough clean underwear.

I fall firmly in the latter. Which means I have often found myself in unfamiliar bathrooms, silently auditing someone else’s toiletries like a customs officer. On multiple occasions, salvation has arrived in the form of my boyfriend’s trusty 3-in-1: shampoo, conditioner and body wash housed in one hulking bottle that looks like it could survive an apocalypse. Against all aesthetic odds, it delivers everything required to return me to civilised society.

At first, I treated it like a last resort. Then, one sleepy morning, despite having actually remembered to pack both a body cleanser and lotion, I reached for it voluntarily. One bottle and a brisk lather later, I felt squeaky clean, fresh and, inconveniently, convinced. It was efficient. And efficiency, I’ve come to realise, has its own strange glamour.