4 Easy Ways to Switch to Clean Beauty

It can be daunting to think about switching out your entire collection of beauty products to cleaner alternatives...but it's easier than you think! Here are four simple ways to get started:

1) Start with one product. Think about the products that you keep on longest during the day and/or which products touch the most surface area (e.g., sunscreen, moisturizer, body lotion, deodorant, etc). These are the products that you should prioritize first when looking for a cleaner alternative. Taking baby steps helped me ease the transition and I hope that it does for you too!

2) Take off your makeup when you get home. This seems like a total no-brainer, but how many times have you gotten home and just sat in your makeup until it’s time for bedtime? Or even worse, after a long night out, fallen asleep with your makeup still on and had to deal with your crusty makeup the morning after? If you think about it, the longer you've let your makeup sit on your skin, the more time it (and all the chemicals in it) have to be fully absorbed into your skin. Taking your makeup off as soon as you get home is the easiest thing you can incorporate into your clean beauty routine today! 

3) Read labels. Remember: there is no perfectly clean product or clean beauty routine. Instead, try to focus on educating yourself on which ingredients to avoid for different categories of products. A great place is get started is EWG's ingredient database, which lets you look up the safety profile of ingredients used in over 100K beauty products. Again, feel free to start small with your research on ingredients. For example, you might decide that you want to avoid carbon black in your eyeliner and mascara. Reading labels before you buy a product will help you avoid brands that include these toxic ingredients.

4) Make your own judgments. Don’t let yourself be shamed into avoiding certain ingredients or products until you educate yourself on why they might be harmful to your health. Once you've done the research, it's up to you to consider whether the potential risks of prolonged exposure to a certain ingredient or chemical is worth it to you. Your clean beauty choices should be personalized to your preferences and risk tolerance so don’t let anyone else tell you otherwise. Be kind to yourself as you start this journey because the transition to clean beauty is a process that takes time.

While I strive to buy and use the cleanest products on the market, I am the first to admit that it's easier said than done. I'm not able to exclusively buy clean products because frankly, some of them aren't as efficacious as certain products with not-so-clean ingredients. This is why I've spent a ton of time researching and doing trial and error to find the best clean products in the market that actually work...and the whole reason I started this blog! Because I truly believe that clean beauty shouldn't mean you are compromising on efficacy!

Have you started switching to clean beauty products yet? What's the first product that you switched out? Let me know what you're up to in the comments.