Collective empties / products I’ve used up

Why hello there! Here is Millie presenting some collective empties I’ve hoarded collected over the last few months:

L to R: Palmolive Naturals Shower Milk in Milk & Honey, The Body Shop Camomile Waterproof Eye Make-up Remover, The Body Shop Banana Shampoo, Garnier Clean Sensitive 2 in 1 Gentle Make-Up Remover, The Body Shop Earth Lovers Watermelon & Eucalyptus Body Wash, Neutrogena Fresh Foaming Cleanser, Garnier Clean Sensitive Gentle Eye Make-Up Remover, Colgate Plax Gentle Care Mouthwash and Colgate Total Toothpaste (front). 

Palmolive Naturals Shower Milk in Milk & Honey

This is a really nice body wash, very creamy, moisturising and lightly scented (milk and honey, as described – but not in a sickly way) and comes in the convenient mega size of 1L which does last a while. Unfortunately I knocked this over in the shower and the pump broke off, which made it completely inconvenient (well, impossible) to use without it, so I just transferred product into a different container with a pump and chipped through it all until it was empty. Would repurchase.

The Body Shop Camomile Waterproof Eye Make-up Remover

I bought this product with high expectations, and on a practical note, it works well; it takes off makeup fairly quickly and doesn’t leave a greasy or sticky texture behind. However, it does sting my eyes like a proverbial beeeeoottchhh! I’m pretty disappointed by that as I thought the Camomile aspect would actually be somewhat soothing, but knowing nothing about that particular ingredient (other than the promise of natural ingredients always sucks us into thinking we’re doing something good for ourselves, which isn’t always the case), I was completely surprised at the stinging aspect. It takes of makeup, doesn’t leave any residue yet moderately stings my eyes, which is a good enough reason to not repurchase this product.

The Body Shop Banana Shampoo

Saw this bouncing around on YouTube beauty videos being raved about and I do like bananas, so I thought I’d give this product a go when it came on sale (which rarely happens with Body Shop products in Australia). I was surprised to find that it cleansed my thick coarse hair quite well without stripping or drying it, and it also smelled quite nicely of bananas… in a pretty artificial way, but not in a gross way (for me anyway!). It works quite well when alternating with other shampoos, as I find this is the best strategy for my quite oily temperamental scalp. I like the scent and it effectively washes my hair without drying it or weighing it down. It’s on my repurchase list!

Garnier Clean Sensitive 2 in 1 Gentle Make-Up Remover

Two words: Holy Grail. I think this is a completely underrated waterproof makeup remover that’s suitable for the eyes and it’s a damned shame that it’s not more raved about (in my experience). It is a dual-phase eye makeup remover, which means it has half oily (not actually oil but the same slip factor) half water solution that needs to be mixed in the bottle (shake the bottle) before you apply on a cotton ball or pad and then gently swipe over the areas on your face that need makeup removal. I use this for my eyes only and it has never irritated or stung my eyes, but it does leave a slightly greasy feeling residue, as dual-phase makeup removers tend to do. The residue doesn’t bother me though, because I always wash my face after I’ve taken my eye makeup off first with this product. Such a good product and affordable. Always repurchase!

The Body Shop Earth Lovers Watermelon & Eucalyptus Body Wash

This was a body wash I was looking forward to because of the promised scent (watermelon and eucalyptus – what’s not to love?) and the eco-friendly aspect behind it. It was disappointing at the very least. It’s a very thin liquid, basically too watery, and the scent was a really strange one… not at all watermelon or eucalyptus, but in my opinion, a custard apple type smell (which isn’t bad, it was just not what was promised). It didn’t lather, didn’t feel that nice to wash with and smelled mediocre. The cleansing aspect of it was fine, but everything else was a bit off. It wasn’t super cheap either, so I won’t repurchase.

Neutrogena Fresh Foaming Cleanser

I ran out of my Paula’s Choice Skin Balancing cleanser one time and couldn’t afford to repurchase, so I had to get an affordable and good cleanser to replace it. I went to beautypedia.com (Paula Begoun’s baby – she runs Paula’s Choice) and found she had rated it well. I figured since I’d been using Paula’s cleanser for so long, that this would be similar, or at least do the job just as well. I was right about the latter. It does the job well, but by no means feels as nice as the Paula’s Choice cleanser, and there is a bit of a plasticy smell at first, which I guess I’ve now gotten used to as I don’t notice it much at all. The texture of the product is not as nice but the cleansing power seems to be the same. My biggest gripe with this cleanser is, that for the first month of using it, it made my feel skin really tight straight after washing with it. I would then proceed with my normal toner and moisturiser routine and this would minimise the tightness, and it only happened for about a month or so, but it was noticeable. Given that the tight feeling went away and that this product cleansed just as well as the Paula’s Choice one, I stuck to it and have been picking it up when it goes on sale here and there, so I’ve had no need to repurchase the Paula’s Choice one since I’ve always had this one ‘in stock’ so to speak. I will repurchase this but I’m not completely abandoning the Paula’s choice cleansers either; this Neutrogena cleanser is simply more convenient to purchase and more affordable at this time.

Garnier Clean Sensitive Gentle Eye Make-Up Remover

This eye makeup remover, unfortunately, doesn’t have the same credentials as the previous Garnier make-up remover I described earlier in this post. It’s a creamy lotion essentially, that works to take off makeup for face and eyes, and it does it effectively, but just not as well as the 2-in-1 makeup remover. This lotion doesn’t dissolve makeup as effectively or as quickly and I find it has a mild tingling affect to my eyes if the product does get in there. It’s not as bad as The Body Shop one, but it’s still present. The fact that I’ve found my HG makeup remover in the 2-in-1 means I’ll never need to repurchase this.

Colgate Plax Gentle Care Mouthwash

A mouthwash is a mouthwash is a mouthwash… right? Well, I thought so until my Dentist told me to avoid alcohol based mouth washes as they damage the gums (allegedly). I heeded his advice (I didn’t like my Listerine mouthwash anyway) and tried a non-alcohol based mouthwash. This one is fine, milder than listerine in that it doesn’t have the same sting, not flavoured grossly and washes my mouth out. I don’t have much to say other than that! It’s effective and apparently doing my gums a favour. Will repurchase when I need to.

Colgate Total Toothpaste

It’s minty, affordable, cleans my teeth and gums well and leaves me feeling fresh and shiny in the morning, or ready to go to bed in the evening. Same as the mouthwash, you’d think all toothpastes are created equal, but I’ve tried a few that have tasted too sweet, not sweet enough, not minty enough, way too minty or just plain yuck. I have no negative things to say about this toothpaste, and the flip up cap makes it cleaner to put away. Will repurchase.

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Soooooooo that’s the end of my small, yet kind of lengthy empties / products I’ve used up. There are no makeup items included in this empties post because as most of us know, it’s usually a while before our makeup stashes get whittled down (if anything they grow, leaving us with more products to use and play with!). I have a couple of lip butters that will soon join  my box of empties, but for now I can finally throw this bunch into the recycling bin where it belongs… and start hoarding my new pile of trash! 😀

Until next time 🙂