Beauty Bust: February Update
This year I vowed to give up beauty buys, here’s what I’ve learned two months in…
First up for February I have a confession to make… I forgot to cancel my Birchbox subscription in January, oops. Is my subconscious already riling against this whole process?
It was actually a disappointing arrival, with some ok eyeshadow (which arrived slightly smashed), a brush (useful), leave in conditioner and dry shampoo (neither of which I use). These might all be making their debut on eBay soon.
The only interesting thing is a hydration mask which totally plays to my purchase obsessions. If I was doing this resolution thing to the letter I guess you could say I shouldn’t use it, but this is mostly about clutter, money, and evaluating my emotional response, so I totally will.
In other news, my micellar water has run out.
Is now a good time to admit I have no idea what micellar water is?
Reading the back of the bottle offers no real explanation, other than that it acts “like a magnet”.
So I’ve done what possibly millions have done before me which is to Google “what is micellar water” - this helpful article on the Huffington Post appeared, so now I know.
Micellar water is made up of micelles (tiny balls of cleansing oil molecules) suspended in soft water.
I’m not sure how I came to buy this; I don’t remember making an active choice. It seems like I responded almost entirely to packaging, in-store promotions and a vague sense that it was something I should have. This notion makes me uneasy.
That said, I do remember being pleasantly surprised when I used it, in that it seemed to do what I thought it was going to do (remove a day’s makeup and grime) and do that well. So I don’t actually have a huge amount of angst about this as a purchase. This means that I am feeling a bit anxious that it’s finished and I can’t buy any more…
So anyway, I’ve been forced to rummage in my stash to see what else is available to remove makeup… and I’ve found these two tiny bottles of micellar water from Thermaliv and Bioderma, but they’re only 20/25ml each so won’t last long.
The Bioderma one is half used, so I’ve obviously tried it (I don’t remember) but if I bought a full bottle it would be more than £10. The Thermaliv one is almost £13! So it’s worth pointing out that micellar water is quite considerably more expensive than regular cleansing liquid, and a huge amount more than the bog-standard cleansing wipes I used before that.
So what other options do I have for getting rid of makeup? Well, I’m thinking, as micellar water is cleansing oil in water, that oil might be a good way of breaking down things like makeup.
I’ve dug around and found Bio-oil which I was given when I was pregnant and seem to have tons of, and I also have this…
So I’m going to experiment with Bio-oil, this, and good old water. I’ll let you know how that pans out.
On a side note, what is it with beauty boxes and dry shampoo? I have LOADS of the stuff in varying scents and styles but I swear I haven’t bought any, at least not for about 5 years.
