Washing with oil is a good idea

First off, I want to add to my favorites list a little bit. One of my favorite methods of cleansing is with oil. Sounds backwards, doesn't it? Once you hear exactly how it works you'll be wondering why all cleansers aren't oil based. Oil and Water... more like Oil vs. Water. They don't get along very well, those two. But what's clogging up your pores and making your skin shiny and slick? It's a natural oil (ok so technically it's a liquid wax) that our skin produces called sebum.

Oil attracts oil. Oil based cleansers have the power to dissolve the hardened oil/wax/sebum in your pores and pull it up to the surface of your skin just like a magnet or a magical vacuum cleaner. Then, if you get an oil-based cleanser that is water soluble, you can add water and rinse. The key to using an oil cleanser is applying it to DRY skin so that the oil & water don't interact until after the oil is dissolved & pulled to the surface. If you have clogged pores or you wear sunscreen or makeup, this is the way to go. And best of all, it's easy to make your very own oil based cleanser.

You can take any oil and make it into an oil cleanser. Let's talk about which oils work best on which skin types, shall we?

Dry skin: Almond oil (sweet almond), Avocado oil, Hazelnut oil
Normal/Combination skin: Olive oil, Grapeseed oil
Oily skin: Sunflower oil, Jojoba oil

You can do a combination of oils or stick with just one, and you can add more exotic oils or oil based goodies like vitamin E. Just remember that this will get rinsed off so you might not want to get too carried away with expensive ingredients. You can also add a few drops of fragrance or essential oils to make it smell appealing. Once you've picked your oil or oils, you'll add some Cromollient SCE at about a 10% concentration. You can adjust the percentage to be more cleansing (use more cromollient) or less (less cromollient) but be sure to write down your recipe so that you can replicate or tweak it.

Oil cleansers are fantastic a few times per week as a deep cleanser, or used at night to remove makeup & SPF. I find that oil based cleansers can be drying if used every day, so I like to alternate them with my regular cleanser. If the DIY project doesn't sound appealing to you, there are some commercially available oil cleansers out there. My favorites are Being True Restoring Deep Cleanser and Fancl Mild Cleansing Oil.