My Three-Step Morning Skincare Routine

I love, love, love reading about people’s routines. I don’t think I’m alone in this and so I thought I’d write about my morning skincare routine.

Here’s the thing: my morning skincare routine has a whopping three steps and one of those steps is splashing water on my face.

Maybe that’s not the worst thing though. I love learning about new products but right now, my life doesn’t allow me more than a few minutes to spend on my face most mornings.

The first thing I do is splash water on my face. Revolutionary, I know. This helps wake me up after a night spent begging my two children to go back to sleep. (Side note: I think one of life’s great cruelties is that we don’t understand how valuable and delightful sleep is until we’re too old to spend 12 hours a night doing it.) Anyway, I make sure to use the coldest water I can stand when I do this because I figure it helps decrease some of the puffiness around my eyes as well. Mama ain’t got time for cucumber slices on the eyeballs, so a splash of H2O it is.

Step two is Glossier’s Milky Jelly Cleanser. I. AM. OBSESSED. The texture of this cleanser is so satisfying. I wish there was a different way to describe it, but Glossier did a pretty bang-up job with “milky” and “jelly.” It’s like a thin but not watery jelly. Beyond the texture though, I’m very pleased with it’s cleansing power. It leaves my skin feeling clean and pure, but not overly stripped of natural moisture. I’ve always been lucky in that I’ve never suffered from a lot of breakouts, but I have used cleansers in the past that seemed to cause them. I’ve used Milky Jelly Cleanser once or twice daily for the last month and my skin is perfectly clear. I also appreciate that Glossier is a cruelty-free brand, meaning they do not test on animals and neither do their suppliers.

Moving on to step three. Last month I saw Burt’s Bees Brightening Even Skin Tone Moisturizing Cream at the grocery and bought it on a whim. This cream absolutely does brighten my skin. After I use it, I really feel like my skin is glowing the way it did back when I was… well, younger. One thing I haven’t decided if I like or not is the way my skin feels immediately after using this product. It feels tight, but almost uncomfortably so. I’ve tried using more product and I’ve tried using less; the feeling is the same. This only lasts for a few moments until the cream really sinks into my skin, but it’s not something I’ve experienced with other moisturizers. I don’t think it’s enough of an issue for me to discontinue using it though. I feel like this bottle isn’t going to last super long and that’s a possible concern for me. I absolutely want to have a cleaner, greener beauty routine, but I don’t have unlimited funds for this project. I’ve used an Honest moisturizer previously that lasted about two months. If the cost per use of the Burt’s Bees is more than the Honest moisturizer, I may switch back. (Not important really, but something about the scent of the Burt’s Bees cream is really appealing to me… it reminds me of Fruit Loops.)

As I work on cleaning up my beauty routine (see this post for background), I figured I’d check the Think Dirty app for both of these products. I was expecting the Burt’s Bees cream to have a great score, but it’s a 5. (On the Think Dirty scale, 0 is cleanest and 10 is what they consider dirtiest.) Although most of the ingredients are rated 0-3 (green), it does contain phenoxyethanol, which is not found in natural extracts and can lead to skin irritation. The Glossier cleanser was rated a 4. Again, most of the ingredients are 0-3; there are three ingredients rated 4, primarily for possible skin irritation. Although neither of these seem to be the greenest options out there, I’ve confirmed that they both rate better than a lot of the previous products I’ve used, so I’ll take this as progress.

There you have it: one busy mom’s quick and effective morning skincare routine. This takes under five minutes to complete and leaves me with skin that looks fresh, soft, bright and clean. I can’t ask for much more than that from these three quick steps!