For as long as I can remember, I have been obsessed with getting dressed up to go to bed. Yes, to go to bed. I can remember being five 5 years old spritzing on orange blossom water, splashing on Jean Naté eau de something and putting a jeweled barrette in my golden brown curls. At 5 my routine took five minutes. Today, nearly 5 decades later, my nightly skincare routine today has a lot more steps. It takes so long that my hubby often passes out before he can say “sweet dreams”, and all the splashes and slathers cost as much as a month’s rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Kansas.
The other day I was cleaning out my bathroom cabinet, going through all the creams, lotions, and serums that I had put out of sight because a) they were no longer working and I paid big bucks for it so I had to keep it, or b) I had abandoned it for another pricy product that promised to rid me of my pores, sags, and wrinkles.
This storehouse of half used skincare stuff doesn’t even include the creams and serums I’m actively using in my drawer. Then it hit me right between my wrinkle free eyes, just how much money I have shelled out over the past decade in hopes to rid my face of the past decade!
The Price of Looking Young Today
An avid reader of beauty and fashion magazines since I was getting lost in the pages of Seventeen Magazine, I am shocked at the price of anti-aging creams, wrinkle-removing serums and magical elixirs marketed to young women today. I’m not shocked that they are being marketed to women who only have a wrinkle in their future…but at the cost! One example, Gwyneth Paltrow and her Goop team partnered with Juice Beauty to create Goop Beauty Skincare. And while some reviews, like this one, say that the product is amazing, the price to keep your skin baby new is a month’s worth of gas for a college grad.
Do Expensive Skincare Products Work
After coming face-to-face with all my impulse buys and my hopes and dreams in a bottle, I wonder if all these expensive products that claim to be good for your skin really do anything to benefit the skin beyond the the surface and short term effects. I wonder if they’re good for your skin only because they’re not bad for you. That’s what we’ve come to define as good for us, the chemicals used aren’t bad?!
After adding up the costs of the products in the half-used graveyard under my bathroom sink, I bit the bullet and threw away ⅔ of what was there. There was easily the cost of 3 pairs of Michael Kors sandals in my waste basket!! This startling realization put me on a path to find another option for a solution to aging skin. One that is worth the cost and does what it promises to do. There’s gotta be something out there!
I know I’m not the only woman who sacrifices her shoe collection for her nightly skincare habit.
So I featured our nightly skincare routine in this episode of my series In the Mind of a Woman. Let me know if you can relate. Share your thoughts and ideas directly in the comments. Note: Links to other posts, videos, etc. will be deleted as they come across as spammy.
This is part of a series on skincare over 40.
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