Giving You the Benefit of My Years of Experience. And Idiocy.
I’ve recently gotten into the routine of wearing makeup most every day after years of complaining about the time primping stole from my much-needed beauty sleep. By which I mean laziness. But a new city and a new boyfriend and a new job has prompted me to strive for something more than the just-rolled-out-of-bed look that I would achieve by… just rolling out of bed.
I’m keeping my routine simple and short to help get myself out of the whiny, just-want-five-more-minutes mode. But the one thing that is really brining my motivation down is the part that comes late at night: makeup removal.
I’ve tried using my face wash to remove my makeup, but it doesn’t work for my eyes and I end up sleeping with mascara residue on the very insides of my lashes. The products I have tried that are made specifically for removing crusty eye makeup have either stung my eyes so severely I thought I was going blind, or left an oily patch on my eyelids that would also seep into my eyes, both causing vision problems. And I can’t! Take it! Any! More!
Please tell me that you have a miraculous and amazing eye makeup remover that will help me keep up my routine from falling back in to the greedy hands of my snooze button.
Valette
Well, first I must insert the obligatory blathering on about the Philosophy Purity Made Simple cleanser, even though I know this is only the fourteen millionth time I’ve mentioned it, but…it takes care of eye makeup too! I no longer use a separate eye makeup remover! I swear, one day this stuff is going to single-handedly solve the crisis in the Middle East.
(And I should really set up a macro for that stupid Sephora link, since I look it up for practically every other column.)
But! If MIRACLE CLEANSERS FROM HEAVEN aren’t enough and you still want a separate eye makeup remover, I always used Clinique’s Rinse-Off Eye Makeup Solvent. Super easy and super gentle, with no oil or blindness-inducing burning. Just dab some on a cotton ball and sweep over your eye.
The BIG thing I learned, however, is to take your eye makeup off FIRST. And maybe this is something everybody just kind of knows, but nobody ever sent me the memo. I would wash my face first, thinking that would be enough and I might get by without using the solvent. And of course, it wasn’t enough. And since I’d already washed my face, I would depend on the solvent to remove EVERY bit of eye makeup — including the stuff that just kind of smeared to the side or under my eye. Thus, a lot of extra rubbing and irritation.
But it works so much better if you use it first, because you can spend less time rubbing your eyes to remove every trace of eye makeup. Use the cotton ball to get rid of your eyeliner and mascara, but then don’t worry about the smears. Your facial cleanser will take care of those. The solvent will loosen the clumpy stuff and allow you to get to the more sensitive areas of your eye, and then normal face washing finishes the job.
Now that I’ve typed all that out, it sounds extremely DUH-like. But that’s me: Easily Impressed By Duh-Like Things, and Then Compelled to Share Them With an Overly-Indulgent Internet.
