Current Skincare Routine 2016: Cleansing Care

Alas, I am back. I have been gone since last year and now I'm finally free to post (actually I was free since almost 4 weeks ago but I was lazy because I FINALLY GOT MY GOD DAMN BREAK). I actually finished Cheese in the Trap, Oh My Ghostess, Oh My Venus and am currently watching Signal and Descendents of the Sun. These 2 shows are seriously good you guys have to watch it!! And apparently DOTS is so popular in China that the Chinese government had to warn their people not to get too addicted to it. And who wouldn't fall in love with the main characters? Song Joong Ki, Song Hye Kyo (Laneige's product placement on point btw), Jin Goo and Kim Ji Won. All the good looking celebrities! The only actor I didn't know of was Jin Goo and boy is he hot. Hehe. Oh My Venus is a great drama too! So Ji Sub (mmmmmmm hot) and the beautiful Shin Minah (O HUI's product placement is on point too bahaha). Anyways, of all the dramas I watched I really love all of the main characters and even some side characters!

Okay, enough of my drama talk and let's move on to what I'm here for today! As you can see from the title, I'll be talking about my skincare routine! I'll be breaking it up into 3 parts: Cleansing Care, Actual Care and Special Care.

Before I start, I would like to inform you guys that I'll be turning 19 years old (if you haven't read my profile) and I have combination skin, with an oily (not super oily) T-Zone and dry cheeks (not the flaking kind). And also, my routine is not a 100% AB routine. It's about 96% AB? And these are the products that I use for my cleansing routine:

AM:
1. Innisfree Bija Trouble Cleansing Gel

PM:
1. Innisfree Green Tea Pure Cleansing Water
2. Innisfree Apple Juice Lip & Eye Remover
3. Son & Park Beauty Water
4. Lee Ji Ham Tea Tree 30 Cleanser
5. Neutrogena Pore Refining Toner

In the morning, when I wake up, I use the Innisfree Bija Trouble Cleansing Gel (KBeauty products need to stop with their super duper long product names :')) to wash off any oil and residue from the skincare products I used the night before. This cleansing gel is actually a makeup remover, but from what I read on the Asian Beauty section of Reddit, it seems like this cleansing gel IS NOT effective in removing makeup. Yes, it is that gentle. :) Not to mention that it has a low pH of 3 as well. Yay! I always use this to wash my hands after applying my waterproof sunblock, and it washes it off pretty well so I guess this would be a great, mild and gentle 1st cleanser for those who only wears sunblock or on days where you only put on sunblock, but it works as a second cleanser too! Either way, this cleansing gel removes any oil and residue on my face, yet doesn't leave it dry, which is great because it doesn't strip away excess moisture that my skincare products have provided my skin throughout the night.

Innisfree Bija Trouble Cleansing Gel

Ahhhhh. Evening time. This is where I get busy.

When I reach home, I first use Innisfree's Green Tea Pure Cleansing Water (phew, that was another long ass name) to remove my makeup, which I usually only consists of BB cushion, eyebrows, blush and highlighter. If I do put on any eye makeup, I'll use Innisfree's Apple Juicy Lip & Eye Remover. Oh I also use the Lip & Eye remover to remove my lip makeup.

Innisfree Green Tea Pure Cleansing Water

Innisfree Apple Juicy Lip & Eye Remover

I then spritz some Son & Park Beauty Water on my face (I transferred the product to a spray bottle) and wipe it off with a cotton pad to remove any makeup residue.

Son & Park Beauty Water

Aaaand my 2nd cleanser would be - you guessed it - Lee Ji Ham's Tea Tree 30 Cleanser. I really love this cleanser and recently bought a new one as I'm almost finished with my first one. The pH for this cleanser is 6.5 (without water). To me, it's not that bad of a pH for a cleanser but I would probably like it to be a little lower, since you know when mixed with water the pH of the cleanser would be a little higher. I have yet to get pH strips to test my tap water yet but I will, soon.

Lee Ji Ham Tea Tree 30 Cleansing Foam

Last but not least, the final step of my cleansing routine would be using a pH adjusting toner - Neutrogena Pore Refining Toner - which I have been using for years until I realised late last year about how pH in skincare products affects our skin's acid mantle. So far this has been my favourite toner for about 4-5 years and I've been through bottles of this. This toner contains AHA and BHA to exfoliate and remove any dead skin cells, although I'm pretty sure with the concentration of AHA and BHA in this toner, it doesn't do any form of exfoliation, hence it is just being used as a pH adjusting toner. I think I'll email Neutrogena and ask them for the concentration of AHA and BHA in this toner and I'll come back and edit this post again. :) But either way, don't get confused between "pore refining" and "pore minimising"! In fact, you can't minimise your pores. Check out this post from Fiddy from FiftyShadesOfSnail! Pore refining simply means that it will clean the pores from excess dirt/sebum and dead skin cells.

Neutrogena Pore Refining Toner

And there you go! This is part 1 of my skincare routine: Cleansing Care! How does your cleansing routine go?


Disclaimer: All products are bought with my own money and all the photos above are taken by me.