Why I Ditched Face Wash

A quick side tangent this week and then we'll get into the results of my shampoo-free month next week.

As I mentioned last week, this article inspired me to ditch many of my hygiene products, including my face soap. I was planning to go cold turkey on everything, but for reasons discussed last week, kept my bar soap as my one and only shower product for a whole month. On "Day 0" of the adventure I also happened to see someone post something about the plastic microbeads in face wash contaminating our water and affecting aquatic wildlife. I wasn't sure if my face wash had plastic microbeads or something more natural, but I was already planning to ditch soap entirely anyway so it was an easy decision to at least eliminate my face wash along with my shampoo and conditioner, keeping only the bar soap.

Other reasons I decided to without face wash:

The Practical:
1) Why use something if I don't need it?

2) That New York Times article linked above states that the author's acne IMPROVED when she ditched all her products. Improved acne by getting rid of a product sounds pretty good to me.

3) The possibility of saving money by no longer buying face wash.

4) We did lots of traveling last month. Fewer hygiene items to pack!

The Environmental:
I read the ingredient list on my face wash. Yikes! I'm a chemistry nerd so I understand that all those scary-sounding chemical names are not as scary as they sound. However, do I really need all that crap in my face wash? No.

All those chemicals also get washed down the drain and sent into our water systems (along with those plastic microbeads.) I don't KNOW that the chemicals cause problems, but I prefer to contribute as little as possible to this sort of thing.

Side note: This is also where I learned the face wash I was using DOES contain plastic microbeads. Want to know if yours does too? Check this list.

The Scientific:
SCIENCE! Experimentation! Gaining knowledge first hand rather than just believing what I read. I'm a scientist and I'm prepared to have my face break out in the worst acne of my adult life just to know for SURE if I need to use face wash or special face soap or not.

The results:
What I decided to do was to use body soap on my face in the shower and to use just warm water and a washcloth any other time I needed to wash my face. I usually wash my face first thing in the morning and right before bed, meaning I'd now wash once in the shower with body bar soap and once with just water and washcloth. And, I actually ended up washing with soap less frequently than planned as I didn't take a shower every day.

So what happened? Not much. The first day felt extra oily and I washed my face (with just water) a few extra times. I didn't break out. Almost no change at all.

Really. Try it.

Next steps, soap free. I'm currently about 5 days into a totally soap-free experiment. Results summary coming soon.

Humans survived for a long time we created specialized face wash and fancy shampoos. I now walk down the personal care product aisles with a new perspective. Here are many many things that you can buy that you don't need. We've just been convinced that we need them. I could go all conspiracy theory on you and say that the companies make products that are too harsh on purpose so that you have to keep using them to battle ever-increasing oil production of your skin which is only trying to combat the harshness of the products you use. Honestly, it wouldn't surprise me too much to learn that there's some truth there, but instead I'll just give you this more reasonable perspective on the whole thing.

I'm not saying everyone should stop showering or stop using all their products. But, it's definitely worth taking some time to question your daily routine and experiment to see what you can eliminate or reduce. Save money, improve your skin, and keep plastic microbeads out of the waterways.