The Body Shop’s Chamomile Sumptuous Cleansing Butter

A lot of people feel really ‘meh’ about cleansers, but I admit I am pretty pedantic about the cleansing part of my skin care routine. It’s important to thoroughly remove makeup, grease, grime, pollution and oil that have built up on the surface of the skin over the course of the day. After all, without a good cleanse, you’re kind of wasting your money putting fancy skin care over the top right?

I have been occasionally using exfoliating cleansers lately – not usually my buzz – but they do help when my skin is congested at that time of the month. But they are pretty hopeless at removing makeup and, especially because my skin has been breaking out, I have needed to wear heavier than usual makeup.

I picked up this Chamomile Sumptuous Cleansing Butter from The Body Shop the other day and the first impressions are tres bien. It is soft, but solid at room temperature, so I scrap a little off and melt it in my fingertips before applying to my face and massaging it into the skin. It feels and smells like heaven on earth and, as far as makeup removal goes, it seems to thoroughly and quickly remove my face makeup. Mascara doesn’t come off as easily, but the mascara I wear is not ‘washable’.

The instructions say you can rinse this off, but I will always remove it with a cloth (hot cloth cleanser style) and then rinse the skin, usually followed by another cleanser or at least a toner. It leaves my skin feeling sumptuous that’s for sure. A couple of the ingredients (a ‘synthetic wax’ and shea butter in an ethylhexyl palmitate base) are considered to be no-no’s for acne or combination skin, but so far no breakouts for me. I don’t know if I would use it daily – just in case it would cause breakouts, but it’s a nice one to add to the cleansing lineup when you’re looking to remove some heavy duty makeup.