the year i threw out most of my skincare

On the first Sunday of January I took everything off the bathroom shelf and laid it out on a towel on the bed. Thirty-one products. I counted twice, because the first number seemed like it belonged to someone else. Nineteen were less than half used. Four had quietly expired. One, an ampoule set from a trip to Seoul, was still in its cellophane, waiting for a version of me with more patience and a different face.

I want to be clear that I was not an amateur. I could tell you the pH of my exfoliating acid and the correct wait time between my retinal and my moisturiser. My seven morning steps took eleven minutes, and I knew this because I had timed them, standing in a small Sai Ying Pun bathroom, applying my third layer while the ferry I meant to catch left without me.

The maths of more

Somewhere in year four of the big regimen, my skin stopped improving and started negotiating. A patch of redness beside my nose that arrived whenever I layered the vitamin C under the acid. A tight, hot feeling on the days I got ambitious. I responded the way collectors do. I bought a soothing serum to calm the irritation the other serums were causing, and the shelf grew by one.

The low-grade guilt is the part nobody talks about. Every half-used bottle on that towel was a small verdict: money spent on a promise I abandoned at the halfway mark. Added up honestly, the shelf had cost more than my sofa. The sofa was doing its job.

The turn came from a sentence in an interview with a formulator I have never met. Asked what she thought of ten-step regimens, she said most skin is not difficult, it is over-managed. The barrier does its best work when it is asked to process less. Each additional product is another variable, another chance for two formulas to quarrel on the surface of your face, another layer the one beneath it has to absorb through. I read that on the tram and thought about the redness beside my nose, which had never once appeared on holiday, when I travelled with a washbag the size of my hand.

The consolidation

So I ran the experiment. Cleanser, sunscreen, and one thing in the middle. The question was what the middle thing should be, because it now had two jobs: the actives I refused to give up, and the moisture my skin plainly needed. Most products are built for one job or the other. Serums carry actives and leave you dry. Creams carry moisture and sit on top of everything like a lid.

The middle thing, since February, has been the Hydration Emulsion from FloreoAetās, an Andean-inspired house whose jars carry a mountain relief pressed into the cream glass. What earned it the spot was the way it is built. It is one layer that carries both jobs at once: hydration, and a gentle, fruit-derived vitamin C suspended in a buffering emulsion. The buffering keeps the active mild enough for skin that has spent years being provoked. The finish is watery and it disappears, so the sunscreen that follows goes onto skin rather than onto product.

There is no mysticism in why this works better for me. It is arithmetic. Two steps means one interaction to manage instead of fifteen. One layer means the actives are delivered with the moisture instead of competing with it. Within three weeks the patch beside my nose had gone, and it has stayed gone, which no soothing serum ever managed while I was also applying the things it was soothing me from.

It costs more than any single bottle it replaced. It replaced three of them. I have not thought about the price since February.

The other converts

When I admitted in a group chat that I had gone from seven steps to two, I expected an intervention. I got confessions instead. Two of them, kept as they were typed:

“Cut from seven steps to two and my skin is better. I keep waiting for the catch. Five months now and the catch has not arrived.”

Former ten-step devotee, Kennedy Town

“My shelf has four things on it now and one of them is a plant. I get eight minutes of my morning back and I spend them drinking coffee sitting down, like a person.”

Recovering collector, Tai Hang

The towel audit happens every January now. This year there were six products on it, all more than half used, and the counting took no time at all. The shelf holds what I use. The morning belongs to me again. It turns out the last step in skincare is subtraction, and the skin was asking for it all along.