How to Part with “Bad” Products
We know it’s been a long, hard winter and, worse, a dreary, cold spring – so we’ve taken up skincare product hoarding as a hobby as well. What else has there been to do since we’ve been stuck inside either due to weather or isolated due to COVID? But, skin team, it’s time. It’s time to take things back into our own hands. Quite literally, dispense that product into your hands and apply it to your face already! But first, make sure it’s still good and also good for your skin.
Follow these simple steps to clean out your product drawers, cabinets, and shelves – and clean up your skincare routine. And spoiler alert, it’s not quite as simple as Marie Kondo would have you think – you can’t just pick up each product, hold it in your hands, and determine if it “sparks joy” or not.
Step one is the low-hanging fruit first (always) – expired products. Hopefully, you know to do this without us even telling you to. Start by checking each item for an expiration date and chucking those that are already past their prime. Just let them go. We have to start somewhere. Trust the process.
For any items that don’t have an expiration date, check the little image printed on the side of the bottle that looks like a tiny jar with an open lid and a number (3, 6, 12, etc) on it. The number indicates the number of months the product expires after opening – so, toss the products that you know have already been open longer than the time length listed. And if you can’t remember when you opened it, *sigh*, just let it go – you’re never going to use it. (Note that an expiration date still outweighs this count even if you haven’t opened the product yet.)
Now, we don’t want to give you too much wiggle room to make mistakes, but while we’re strict about a lot of things when it comes to skincare – we’ve been known to break this rule from time to time. But please, we’re trusting you to use your best judgment if you’re keeping products past their prime, so always check with us when you’re not sure if it’s still safe to use or not. And we encourage you to use anything that you’re choosing to keep that’s past its expiration date quickly, so be liberal with it (since it’s likely not as potent as it used to be) and layer on an extra layer or so to use it up completely within the next month. You can even slosh it onto your hands and definitely coat your chest and neck as well (or even the rest of your body).
That should take care of the low-hanging fruit unless you haven’t fully followed the instructions above. If that’s the case, you know who you are and you better open every questionable product and check it for smell, color, and consistency. If any of those three are off, it goes straight to the garbage and you should “Go directly to jail; do not pass go, do not collect $200.”
Step two, and we think Marie Kondo would agree with us here, let go of anything that’s not serving you. This goes for anything that contains pore-clogging ingredients if you’re acne-prone, probably anything you bought thanks to a TikTok video or Instagram influencer, and certainly anything that’s not giving you results or the skin you want. You know we’ve written about junk food skincare before, and we’ll say it again, your skin care recommendations should come from a professional – and we don’t mean the sales associates at Sephora! We mean us, licensed aestheticans who research skin and products and touch skin and products all day, every day. We know what we’re doing, we care about your skin, and we know about what products your skin needs.
If you think you need an intervention (or at least more help than the two-step guidance we laid out above) book a product reboot with one of us today. We’ll have you fill out an intake form before you arrive so that we can study your current products and your skin concerns and goals. Then, bring as many of your current products along with you as you’d like to your appointment and we’ll dig in to really find out what is serving you and what may not be. You’ll come away with a designer regimen. And we don’t mean designer as in $$$, we mean that it’s custom just for you and your skin. We think Marie Kondo will really love that, and so will you.