I’m kind of struggling with finer hygiene and self-care :(

Hi friends, I'm a bit embarrassed to say this, but yeah. I'm 15 years old, brown girly, and it's hard figuring it out ☹️☹️ I know the basic stuff, I shower 2-3 times a day (it's normal in my climate), I brush my teeth in the morning and evening, I wash my hair frequently. But the thing is that there's a lot of stuff I don't know, and I basically have to figure it out by myself. My dad is Indian, but he's a stereotypical man and doesn't know anything about these topics. My mom is white, so there's a lot of things she can't really help me with, like taking care of my wavy hair or how to find makeup that actually looks good on me. The things she does know, she didn't tell me because ig she thought I just already know. So that's the situation, and I don't even know what I don't know.

For example, I didn't know you're supposed to moisturise your knees, elbows, ankles etc daily. You know I never did that in my whole life until last night? I had looked in the mirror and saw that my elbows were super ashy, so I asked my mom if we have any lotion. Turns out she has been moisturising her elbows for years, but she never told me you have to do that.

Or for another example, I feel I have a lot of dry or dead skin on my legs and feet. My mom says I just need to scrub the soles of my feet for like a minute in the shower each day. I don't think a minute works for me, because there's a lot and my feet soles are pretty hard. Once in a blue moon I set aside time and really get down to business with soap, water and a foot scrubber. It takes a long while, but afterwards my feet are soft. And then I don't do anything for a week or more, my feet become hard again, and the thought is so daunting that I don't even want to do it.

My mom also hasn't told me anything about dead skin. I don't know if she does anything about it, as far as I know we don't own a loofah or a scrubbing sponge or whatever you're supposed to use, but her skin is quite soft and it doesn't seem like she has dead skin buildup. I don't know what to do for myself. Trying to scratch it all off with my hands like a caveman can't be the solution. I tried using the foot scrubber on my knees and ankles once, and it did get the skin off, but it also left a lot of small scabs. I should get a loofah or a sponge, or what?

As for my hair, I'm working on it. When I was small I would wash it once a week and it worked well for me, it didn't get greasy fast, but when I became 10 or 11 my mom (who has a different type of hair than me) insisted I should wash it every other day. For the past 5 years I've been washing it every other day, and now it does get greasy by the time I'm supposed to wash it, so idk. Is that the optimal routine? In December I went to an actual good hairdresser instead of the neighbourhood $10 barber aunty for the first time in my life. They gave me some products which I think are working a bit, but the haircut wasn't really what I wanted (it was a "curly cut", so she knew what she was doing, but she gave me a bob which I didn't really want. My fault though, I was a bit confused.) I think I'll go back to cutting my own hair, which I've been doing for a few years now, as I like the results more.

Also, I have some bumps on my elbows, they're small and don't hurt and are pretty much the same colour as my skin. Google says I have skin cancer or some other terrible disease, but obviously that's not the case. I want to get rid of them as I think it's annoying, what I do? And I have old scars on my knees which I also want to treat somehow.

In the end, like I said, I don't know what I don't know, so I don't know what else I should be asking about. I would be really grateful for any advice