Honey as a face wash

Tiny Tortoise #2: Sticky, sublime or somewhere in between?

Photo by Jocelyn Morales on Unsplash

Hello mates, I’m back with you with another Tiny Tortoise post, where I share a very small change/experiment/tool that is either slow living related, or slow-adjacent.

This week, it’s something I mentioned a couple of months ago, but never really elaborated on — using honey as a face wash.

I used to do this about eight years ago, when I was deep in my super-crunchy phase. (A phase I never fully left behind, truth be told. A bit like my dirtbag ski lift operator phase of 2003, and the hardcore thrifting phase of 2010-2012. They’re all still rolling around in here somewhere.)

I can’t remember why I stopped using honey as a face wash but was reminded of it a couple of months ago when I read this post on

The Unpublishable

. I decided to give it a whirl and two months in: I’m a convert. Or rather, a re-convert.

How?

I smear a blob of raw honey over my face (a twenty-cent-piece sized blob does the trick) and leave it on while I brush my teeth or wash my hair. Then I rinse it off with warm water and a face washer. That’s it. Job done.

Why?

Honey (especially raw honey and manuka honey) is:

• antibacterial

• antimicrobial

• gentle on your skin, preserving the natural acid mantle designed to prevent infection

• a humectant, meaning it promotes hydration

• way more affordable than most commercial skin-care brand cleansers (I buy local raw honey at our bulk food shop, The Source, which charges $19.95/kilo)

• natural, edible, sustainable*

*I know honey is not an option for the vegans amongst us. Pure jojoba oil is a great alternative cleanser, which I sometimes use to remove sunscreen and eye makeup and also use as a moisturiser.

But does it work?

Your answer to this would likely depend on how you go into the experiment. Me of eight years ago started using honey as a face wash with the expectation that soon my skin would shine with inner-health, just like the dewy-skinned Earth Mother Instagrammers I was enamoured with. So in that regard, it didn’t “work”. My skin remained my skin, with all of its perceived flaws — which, upon reflection, is probably why I moved on to try some other Insta-trend skincare solution, hoping to find the miracle that would replace my epidermis with someone else’s.

But two months into this version of the experiment and my skin is clean… so as far as I’m concerned, the honey is doing its job. It also feels slightly softer and no longer swings wildly between paper-dry and super oily, and I’ve had no significant hormonal breakouts, which is awesome and unusual for me.

This time round I didn’t expect that I’d miraculously develop Perfect Skin™ as a result of using honey as a face wash. And I was right. But that’s kind of the beauty of it. That this accessible, affordable, sustainable, unprocessed food is doing the same thing a more costly, mass-produced product might otherwise do feels like a status-quo-busting little win.

Not only am I saving money, avoiding some questionable ingredients, simplifying my skincare routine (honey and jojoba oil is pretty much it now) and cutting way back on packaging, I also get a ridiculous amount of joy out of bucking the beauty standards that I’ve been internalising since I was a little girl.

Honey as a face wash isn’t going to revolutionise anything, but if I learn to love my skin as it is, that’s a pretty big change with a ripple effect that reaches far further than the bathroom cupboard. Plus, I can now recognise that my skin is doing a bang-up job of keeping my face together, and I’m grateful for that. (Thanks, skin.)

Have you tried honey as a face wash? Or simplified your skincare in some other way? Let us know in the comments!

Brooke xx