At some point during January, I stopped washing my face. I know, it doesn't seem right. It still doesn't, I don't know, feel right. I had a routine before I would go to bed: brush teeth, take out contacts, wash face, apply lotion - and it had been that way ever since high school. And in high school, oh boy I'm not even kidding, I had the clearest skin! Cetaphil Cleanser every night, Clean & Clear blackhead remover scrub in the shower every morning. But then I went away to college and the last thing I wanted to do before collapsing into bed was wash my face. Even if I would have washed my face every night in college, it wouldn't have mattered because for some reason, my skin got used to the Cetaphil and it suddenly didn't work for me anymore. Fast forward to today, 6 years later, and Cetaphil still doesn't work for me. (But that doesn't mean I don't keep a big bottle under my sink for when, you know, it decides to work again...?)
So last year I experimented with a few different night-time cleansers: Desert Essence Thoroughly Clean Face Wash, Philosphy's Purity facial cleanser, Kiehl's Midnight Recovery Serum, Peter Thomas Roth Botanical Buffing Beads, ProActive, a Clarisonic, etc. My bathroom was starting to look like a CVS. Nothing worked! It was really frustrating. I thought at least the ProActive would work because, well, TV doesn't lie...right? The only thing the ProActive system managed to do was make my face smell like a chemical spill. I was fed up and depressed and convinced myself that nothing I could buy from a store would help. In the middle of feeling sorry for myself and while I contemplated making an appointment with a dermatologist, I stopped washing my face before bed. Horrified that all the makeup and grime from the day was going to make my face look like a pizza, I scanned my face every morning for the red pre-pimple bumps that I was sure would surface. Amazingly, none did. So for the past two months, I've not washed/lotioned my face before bed. And every morning I wake up expecting to see a crop of new white heads or raised bumps on my chin. And every morning I'm still surprised when I continue to see clear skin.
I lazed my way to clearer skin. I still feel weird about going to bed with an unclean face and that my pillow cases hate me and will rise up and strangle me while I sleep. But as long as being lazy continues to work for my complexion, the longer I wont wash my face. (Poor me.)
