Sometimes, keeping up with your skin-care regimen can feel like a 9-to-5 job. If you’re like me, your top shelf is overflowing with beauty products that are all battling it out for real estate, your routine rivals the K-beauty 10-step standard, and any excuse to cancel plans calls for a night spent sheet masking…or does it?
As regimens get more robust and regimented, it can actually kind of feel freeing to skip even the most basic steps—like cleansing—all together and then revel in the JOMO (joy of missing out) of time back in your evening. Of course, this shouldn’t also come with the unshakeable anxiety of whether your skin will pay for it in the end.
Long story short: While dermatologists and skin-care pros alike have long preached that a healthy complexion starts at the sink, washing your face twice a day (and for some, that even means the double cleanse), skipping the skin-care commandment here and there isn’t a huge deal. Will pimples populate your face overnight? Will you wake up with a pile of grime? Will your glorious complexion be ruined?
Relax. According to one derm, there’s absolutely no need to panic if you don’t wash your face religiously. “It’s not the end of the world if you skip a cleanse,” says Mona Gohara, MD, a Danbury, Connecticut-based dermatologist. And in truth, the stress reaction that comes with fretting over your skin-care won’t do you any good either.
Of course, this comes with serious caveats. Dr. Gohara notes that it basically applies to people who either don’t wear tons of makeup or don’t get acne or rosacea. So if you’re a practitioner of the no-makeup movement or get by with just a few dabs of concealer, you get the green light to be lazy in your cleansing game. It’s equally not so bad for those who don’t have problematic skin conditions.
As common sense would tell you, however, if you’re mid-breakout or acne-prone, it’s better to be diligent about cleansing. (Still, if you accidentally skip once here and there, it’s okay.) Take this as a reason to just be easy on yourself—everyone deserves some OOO time, whether that’s from work or simply your complex beauty routine. Because: JOMO.
To help, here are easy-to-use facial cleansers. And perhaps you’ll want to try the keto cleanse for your face (yes, it exists).
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