Quick mini post:
I’ve just finished the cleansing tour with Clarins and one of the recurring themes during the 121 time was confusion over what was safe/appropriate to mix and match up each day. The influx of newness on the market has meant a lot of people are spoilt for choice when reaching for their product and are maybe a little confused over what they should ‘use up’ quickly and when it’s appropriate to dabble.
Speaking generally, use up your middle, and feel free to dabble with your bookends. Oo-er. Cleansers you can mix up. Go by what you’re wearing on your skin – makeup or SPF, whether it’s a morning or evening cleanse and your skin type or current skin condition.
Equally, totally and completely fine to own just one. Acids generally keep for a healthy period of time due to the preservatives necessary in an acid anyway, so using a couple of different ones a week shouldn’t do any harm, although try and remember to use different types of acid as oppose to just different types of the same acid i.e. most people when asked turned out to have 2 or 3 glycolic acids, but no lactic or salicylic. Lactic is a safe starting point for most if you haven’t used an acid before. Eye creams again, I would use one and use it up.
Having said that, eyes are usually the first place to tell you if they aren’t happy with a product. Eye creams are not a product you ‘persevere’ with. If it doesn’t suit, pass it on. So: serums should absolutely be used until finished up. Especially your vitamin Cs, retinoids etc.. When they’re empty, you can ascertain if your skin liked the product/saw a noticeable improvement or if you need to step it up or back a gear. Moisturiser: while superfluous moisturisers are nice to have, they’re unnecessary. These days I tend to use up the moisturiser I’m using before moving on to a new one. I do have ones for dryer days, and ones for traveling, but generally, I get through them in a pretty methodical fashion.
