Items I regret buying

When you try beauty products as much as I do, you of course come across some products that you didn’t like. Products which you wished you wouldn’t have spent any money on. I am someone who is prone to allergic reactions and so when it comes to skin-, body- and haircare, I am very careful at what I do or don’t pick up. I check ingredient lists left and right, but still there is that one product that makes you curious nonetheless. Of course, someone out there may think these products are great and deem them their holy grails, but these 5 products didn’t work for me and here’s why.

1.) The Body Shop Aloe Eye Defence

Let’s start with the least disappointing product. I love The Body Shop’s Aloe Vera skincare line. Like I said, I have allergy prone skin and so I love using their gentle facewash, toner and cleansing gel from this line as well as the night cream. But sometimes, gentle can be a bit too gentle. This did nothing for my eye area. It took ages to soak into my skin and then, nothing. No matter how long I used it. It was also a bit too watery and sometimes got in my eye, which then ended up irritating that. This product may work for you if you have super sensitive skin, but my skin required a bit more nourishment than this eye cream could give me.

2.) Dr. Organic Organic Aloe Vera Gel

On to quite possibly the most horrible product in this post. You’d think that if a product is organic and 100% natural and basically only Aloe Vera and nothing else, your skin would like it? Especially if you use tons of other Aloe Vera products on your face by other brands? Well forget that. I put this on, hoping it would moisturize my skin. What I got instead was a face that felt like it was burning and turned very very red. Even after washing it off, I could still feel it as it had already begun to sink into my skin. Apparently this product is only meant as an after sun type product, but really if you’re already sunburnt I wouldn’t even want to put this on my skin anymore.

3.) Lush Honey I Washed the Kids soap

One beauty cult favorite which I of course had to try when I found myself in Lush for the first time. I tried both the soap as well as the It’s Raining Men shower gel with the same scent. And I just can’t get over the scent and texture of this. It smells and feels as if I’m pouring a big jar of super sweet honey over myself. It just doesn’t make me feel clean. Instead, I feel like I need to shower again because I felt so gross and yucky. I still cringe just remembering what this stuff felt and smelt like. And that’s strange because I do like the smell of honey. I absolutely swear by another Lush shower gel (Flying Fox, which I reviewed some weeks ago) which includes 4 different types of honey and a bunch of jasmin. I have a similar response to more edible smelling shower gels too though (cookie dough shower gel is NOT for me), so it might just be that I don’t like washing myself that smell like something you could eat.

4.) The Body Shop Lemon body scrub

Let’s not even start about scrubs in jars, because that would be a whole different rant I could go on. For me, this scrub, despite the heavenly smell, made it onto this list because I didn’t like the scrubbing particles. They were too big, or too coarse, or too harsh, or something. In any case, every time I used this I felt like I had shaved off the top layer of my skin with sand paper. *shudders*. On top of that, it didn’t do anything much else than scrub my skin bare (leaving red marks, might I add). I used up the entire tub, but now I do feel apprehensive about trying any other TBS scrubs.

5.) Anatomicals The Follicle Oracle Cucumber & Mint shampoo

The final product I disliked wasn’t one which I picked myself. This shampoo came in a beauty box which I ordered some time ago. I tend to try tons of different shampoos as I’m not that brand oriented when it comes to what I put in my hair. So when the time came to try a new shampoo I picked this from my drawer and started using it. The first couple of weeks went by just fine. I tend to wash my hair 2 – 3 times a week and the shampoo did what it was supposed to do and smelt absolutely divine. So I was loving it. Until, a few weeks into using it, I started to get an itchy scalp. I didn’t worry too much yet as that can be caused by multiple things. But the more I washed my hair with this, the more itchy my scalp got. To the point where I ended up with dandruff for the first time in my like. It took weeks of using a different shampoo (Lush Squeaky Green) to solve that problem and this one went into the bin very quickly. I think it may just have been a tad too aggressive and stripping for my scalp. Too bad, because it was a great shampoo on all other fronts.

That’s it, 5 items I regret buying. Of course, these may work wonders for other people. They just didn’t work for me. But if you are like me, with allergic reactions happening left and right I would suggest you steer clear of these products. Or if you don’t like shower gels that smell like food. Or am I the only person who has an aversion to that?

What products do you regret buying?