A Good Clean

You can make an enormous difference to the condition of your skin with an effective cleansing routine.

In just 10 days time you will notice the difference that your hard work can achieve.

Without changing any of the preparations that you normally use, you would still be able to produce this difference because the skin is being really cleaned and ‘worked’.

Where to clean?

First decide on the area that you are going to treat.  My recommendation is that you should treat the face from the hairline, around the ears and down the back of the neck and then across the chest.  In order to have free access to this whole ‘palette’, you will need to have your hair back off your face and no clothes on your shoulders.

 Any cleanser, no matter what its texture, is used only for the purpose of loosening ‘dirt’ from the skin.  This is true of any form of cleanser.  For example, when you use detergent for cleaning your clothes, or your dinner plates, shampoo for your hair or your car, or any other cleaning agent, all you are doing with it is loosening the ‘dirt’ so that the water can remove it more effectively.  As you would never dream of using just the detergent or shampoo in your cleaning rituals, so you should never just use cleanser.  That would lead to a film of dirty cleanser being left on your face.

Why clean?

Let us just look for a moment at what this daily ‘dirt’ is comprised of: 

First of all, as our skins are primarily a large excretory organ, we find our own waste -

·         stale sweat,

·         rancid oils,

·         dead cells. 

Then we find the remains of anything that we actively applied -

·         moisturisers,

·         SPF factors,

·         make up. 

Finally, because we humans are great touchers of our face (we lean, pick and generally fiddle with our faces almost constantly) we will find on our favourite touching places, deposits of whatever we have handled during the course of our day and did not subsequently wash off our hands.

You can see from this list that you really do need to do a good cleanse at the end of the day.  The morning cleanse is equally important bearing in mind the amount of important activity that the skin engages in during our rest periods (see FAQ’s).

How to clean?

So, with the word “loosen” firmly in your mind, apply a liberal amount of the cleanser to your whole face, neck and chest; work it around well with your fingers.  If you feel that the cleanser is slowly being absorbed into the skin, wet your fingers and this will ‘call’ it back to the surface again.  Once you feel that you have now sufficiently loosened the dirt into the cleanser, your job is to remove the dirty cleanser completely. 

At this point, I would recommend that you put in a mid-stage into your routine.  This is really just to remove the excess of the cleanser so that you do not have to use huge amounts of your tonic.

This mid-stage can be done using either water or tissues.  So you either rinse off or wipe off, the surplus cleanser.

Now you come to the toner.  It is important that the toner you use is mild, as the residue that is left behind must be kind and beneficial to the skin.  However it is also important that it does a good job of removing all the ‘dirty’ cleanser as well.

Take two cotton wool circles (squeeze them out in water first (this is just to be economical) and apply toner liberally to them.  Now proceed to remove all the remaining traces of the cleanser with ‘wiping off’ movements. This removing action is the most important part of the whole cleansing routine so try not to skimp on it.  Repeat this stage twice.  At this point, the residue that is left on the skin is clean enough, and with a well formulated toner, valuable enough to be left.

An important last step

As doing a good job of cleaning your face will disturb/remove the acid mantle of the skin, you must immediately follow with a product like a serum, moisturiser or night cream because they have a neutral ph and therefore will neutralise the acid/alkalinity balance of the skin so that remains healthy and comfortable.  Your skin will replace its own acid mantle, naturally, in about 20 minutes

As in all things, it is important that the changes in your cleansing routine are both lasting and consistent in order to get the best results.

FAQ’s

Do I need to cleanse my skin in the morning if I have done nothing but sleep since I last cleaned it?

The cleansing that you do in the morning is important because overnight your parasympathetic nervous system comes into play and the skin repairs and renews itself. The skin thus continues to function as an excretory organ.   However, as there is very little gravitational pull and muscular or skeletal movement, the system of removal of waste from the tissues slows and there is not effective drainage overnight. 

Your cleansing routine in the morning is a good way of getting the whole system up and running quickly and cleaning off the debris of dead skin which has sloughed off overnight.

How will I choose a good cleanser and toner?

A cleanser is good if it loosens well but is easily removed.

Tonics are good if they remove well, but are mild.

Must I use a tonic?

To my mind, your toner is more important in your routine than your cleanser. If you are pressed for time in the mornings, then use a liberal amount of the toner on cotton wool and do that twice; it would be better than using the cleanser only. 

The evening cleansing is just too important to miss doing thoroughly.

How much cleanser and toner should I be using?

You should be using both of them liberally.

© 2026 Ruth Minoletti. All rights reserved.

Email  rmakincareuk@aol.com

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