The Organic Pharmacy Carrot Butter Cleanser

• This balm melted into an oil quickly and easily. In the jar, the balm is a hard solid. (Exactly like Darphin’s balm.) But as soon as you rub it into skin, it starts to melt. It spreads fairly well. You can massage it over your face for a while without the oil drying out (what I call “losing the slide”).
• However, I was dismayed to find that this balm does NOT emulsify with water. In other words, it did not turn milky when I splashed water over my skin. This balm suggests a muslin cloth for removal, but I skipped this step as I am not a fan of muslin cloths. Plus, for testing purposes, I always do a cleanse without the assistance of a cloth or sponge for removal.
• I ended up rinsing and rubbing for a couple minutes to get the oil off. My hands became all waxy as soon as they became wet (where the oil had been), and this waxy residue resisted being rinsed off. Eventually the rinsing reduced the residue enough for me to feel satisfied that most of it was gone. But there was still some left on skin. If I had used a muslin cloth or sponge, moving it over skin would have picked up the oil and taken it off much more easily.
• I decided to add a second cleanse (making it a double cleanse) with a Salicylic acid cleanser (Dermalogica’s Clearing Skin Wash). That took off all the residue.
• My skin felt clean afterward, neither oily nor stripped. Just right. And it looked more clear.
• This is the kind of balm where you need to use a muslin cloth or facial sponge for removal, or do a double cleanse with a water-based cleanser in the second step.
• This balm is ideal for dry and normal skin types (my skin is Normal-Dry). It is not suitable for oily or acneic skin. The lack of emulsification would be a tactile turnoff for an oily skin type, and it would be problematic on active breakouts (which should be disturbed as little as possible, i.e. no excessive rubbing or tugging). Plus muslin cloths are not ideal for break-out prone skin unless a completely clean one (freshly laundered and dried) is used everyday. Bacteria can linger on a cloth that is hand washed and hung to dry.
• If you have oily or acneic skin, you should generally use a cleansing oil, not a balm, unless the balm is super easy to spread and emulsifies easily (e.g. Banila Co. Clean It Zero). I still have to recommend my Holy Grail cleansing oil – Dermalogica Precleanse – as the best cleansing oil for all skin types.
• I like this balm better than Eve Lom, Colleen Rothschild, Darphin, and several others I have sampled. It’s on the expensive side ($74 for 2 oz), so not an economical daily option. I would recommend this as a nice-to-have addition to a cleansing oil rotation. For me, this balm was intended for dry skin days, not as an everyday cleanser (Precleanse is my go-to daily cleansing oil).