Spring Cleansing Your Skin Care

Cleansing is more than skin deep, and it’s that time of year to spring cleanse your skin care. Let the longer daylight and the renewal of nature be your reminder to lose the old and bring in the new for healthy, beautiful skin.

Cleansing Your Skin Care Stash

Makeup and skin care products have shelf lives. Holding on to outdated, stale, or contaminated products increases your chance of dull skin, breakouts, even infection. Here’s a quick guide for cleansing your cabinets and your makeup bag.

Toss:

  • Mascara older than three months. (Put a sticky label with the purchase date on your new tube.) No matter how fresh your mascara, toss it if it’s clumpy or dried out. Pro tip: Never pump the brush in the tube–it adds air, which speeds drying. Instead, twirl the brush once for even coverage.
  • Sunscreen, moisturizer, foundation, BB cream, and other SPF-containing products more than a year old. SPF loses its effectiveness rapidly after 12 months.
  • Any makeup or skin care product past its expiration date. Quality products, especially physician-formula skin care products containing active ingredients, carry use-by dates. If you can’t remember when you started using a product, it’s probably too old.
  • Any makeup or skin care product that has changed composition–color, texture, smell. Crumbling powders, separated creams, and odd-smelling, darkened or yellowed products are showing the effects of spoilage, by time or bacterial contamination or both.
  • Brushes, sponges, and applicators that are beyond cleansing. (This includes those that come with the product.)

Clean:

  • Makeup brushes. You should be doing this regularly, every other week at least. Use a good quality brush cleaner or a gentle antibiotic liquid soap or baby shampoo. Pro tip: After cleansing, let brushes air dry flat, with bristles aligned. Setting brushes upright in a cup to dry lets moisture seep into the glue that binds the bristles, loosening them.
  • Your makeup bag. Spring is a great time to grab new makeup containers for your purse and travel bag. Remember to keep them clean through the year with regular emptying and washing (if indicated) or a thorough cleansing with an antibiotic wipe.
  • The drawer, cabinet, or shelf where you keep your skin care products. Yeah, you know, that bin under the sink where stray hair scrunchies and product samples and half-empty nail polish bottles go to die. Skin care products last longer in a clean, airy space away from direct sunlight, heat, and moisture.

Don’t forget spring cleansing for your skin, too.

  • Lose winter dryness with a gentle exfoliating whole-body scrub. You can make your own by mixing 2 cups brown sugar with 1 cup olive oil. Apply all over from the neck down. Gently scrub, and rinse thoroughly in lukewarm water. Apply a light moisturizer while skin is still damp.
  • Switch to a skin freshening cleanser. Never use a mechanical exfoliating scrub on your face, where skin is extra sensitive. Instead, use a cleanser containing AHA and BHA acids that gently slough away dull dry winter skin without aggravation. We recommend SkinMedica AHA/BHA Exfoliating Cleanser. We can also help you choose the right cleanser for your acne-prone skin.
  • Schedule a spa treatment, like our Euro-Facial or Flare-Fighter Anti-Acne Facial. Both include gentle exfoliation and professional extraction of blemishes and clogged pores.

Call or email our spring cleansing experts today!