How I Cleaned up My Skincare Routine

Clean Beauty has taken over the beauty market. The movement requires transparency in ingredients used in beauty products. This comes as no surprise following the controversy linked to some ingredients such as parabens, oxybenzone, hydroquinone and others. We all want to use products that are safe for our skin, our health, and respect our values. 

 What exactly is clean beauty?

• The development of more organic skincare ingredients (without GMO) 
• The growth of the natural or raw product market in skincare 
• The use of “nontoxic” ingredients
• The use of more sustainable packaging.

But, after trolling the internet for months, we have not found an official definition for clean beauty.  Clean beauty does not have one official label, every company has its definition.
Some companies provide their definition on their website or a list of ingredients they choose not to work with.

So, how can we clean up our skincare routines when it is so hard to define what clean beauty is?

We chose to take it step by step.  

Step One: Research ingredients that are considered "toxic" for the skin

 Knowledge is power, so we went online for information. 
We did extensive research on clean beauty, read multiple articles on the subject, examined European regulations on toxic ingredients. We also compared the approaches clean beauty brands have on “toxic ingredients” on the market right now.

We made a list of ingredients to avoid.

Step Two: Declutter your beauty cabinets.

This step was very therapeutic as we practised Marie Kondo’s philosophy in our cabinets. First, we got rid of the expired products. Then, we separated the products in three categories: 

• the ones that “spark joy”, 

• the ones in line with our values

• the ones we did not like.

For the ones we did not like, we chose to give them away or to recycle what could be recycled.

Step Three: Read the labels of the products.

This step was a bit tedious. We read the ingredients of each beauty product we owned and compared it with the ingredient list we created after our research. 

Step Four: Make conscious decisions.

Armed with more knowledge on the products we love, it was decision time!

 We chose to make sure that the products we used matched our values and that they are safe for us and the environment. In the end we ended up with non-toxic (based on our list), environmentally friendly products that work for our skin tone.

For us, Clean Beauty is a philosophy based on making a conscious decision about the products we choose to put on our bodies. We want them to be safe for our health, the environment and respect our values.

This was a great experience and was very enlightening. What do you think of clean beauty? Have you made the switch?

Photo by Pavel Danilyuk from Pexels