So quarantine sucks, but the wfh attires of growing sweatpant collections, the new ways we’ve learned how to spend our free time, and the facetime happy hours are some positives to keep a note of. But the real saint among all the negatives- how happy my skin has been.
I will mention I came into quarantine with going over a month makeup-free. Australian heat does require some getting used to before indulging in a full face of makeup, so I took the easy route of au naturelle. But that heat also allowed for some minor infractions of sunburn, sweat, and ocean air that can all equate to some facial skin imbalances.
I will also mention that I’ve never had severe skin problems. All of high school I had clear skin, rewarding me with constant compliments from friends and foes, and also is the reason I never created a solid skin routine until I had to. The first-year of university took a turn for the worst with introducing me to the painful and traumatizing experiences of cystic acne. It was by no means the extent that some individuals have had to deal with, but those constant, reproducing under the skin pimples from hell are something I wouldn’t wish on anybody. This was finally my time of experimentation and I was suckered into buying anything that any beauty-bloggers, Sephora workers, or my friends were telling me to. Ultimately I spent hundreds of dollars on moisturizers alone and had only grown less impressed with my skin through my first couple years of uni.
Besides the random weeks where I was feeling myself, my skin was never quite as ‘perfect’ as it once was. Until now.
This past month and a half almost all of my acne scars and blemishes have finally taken the hint they are deeply unwanted. I’m also someone who struggles with dryness, especially due to these prairie winds, and I have not had a single day where my skin feels like the Sahara Desert.
This could be a result of my constant water intake as I sit at home with very little will to live left in me, or maybe the shift of my every other day showering turning to every four or five days (in some instances, it’s quarantine, there is no room for judgment). But I give most credit to my shift to The Ordinary products.
Quarantine led to some very necessary online shopping hauls, and skincare is definitely one I think everyone should invest in. I still have a stronghold onto my Peter Thomas Roth obsession, but The Ordinary is making its mark in the beauty world and there is no doubt about it.
From Instagram to TikTok people are sharing in their fondness of the VERY reasonably priced skincare brand. Some of my favorite products are vitamin C suspension and salicylic acid. In fact, I would swear on my grandmother that the acid is the sole reason for my blemish erasures. I have yet to find my perfect moisturizer within their products, but my fruit-loop smelling Kate Sommerville one has never let me down, not even in the wake of a pandemic.
Quarantine has given me plenty of time to do full skin treatments; I’ve finally had the time and energy to make my way through my Sephora collection of face masks and have been sure to do my am and pm routines rigorously.
As much as the time we’re in sucks, I think it’s important to find some positives to keep ourselves sane, and so far my biggest accomplishment is this dewy, nearly-flawless skin of mine.