e spend so much money on our skincare and haircare, that it’s only fair to ourselves to 1) spend that money on brands that are truly worth every penny, and 2) are accessible and available. The third, albeit personal, rule I apply to my own beauty purchases is that the items are preferably locally produced, because these products tend to be available more readily, and supporting local businesses is my jam.

Saying that, not every skin and hair care brand that is advertised to you is good. Sometimes a product will be marketed so well, and so conveniently to its target audience, that you’ll be tempted to spend the money just to see if the claims are true, and find that they are not.

However, the last haul of skin and hair stuff I gathered has mostly been fruitful.

Here’s a list of the items I would definitely repurchase:

Some important details

Test subject’s skin type: used to be oily, now kind of dehydrated, with the occasional hormonal acne

Test subject’s hair type: fine, 2b/2c waves and curls, dry ends, and tangly like most curl types tend to be

SkinDeep I Peel Good

This has been the fourth bottle I have used in the last year, and it is totally worth its completely reasonable price. Lactic, glycolic, and tartaric acids help melt away dull skin, while salicylic acid unclogs pores and shrinks any zits that might be there. Used once a week - twice, if you can tolerate it - it goes a long way to resurfacing skin and making it look healthy and glowy if you’re in a super rush.

Scoop O Scrub Oatally Amazing Face Scrub

Brown sugar, oats, raw honey, tea tree oil and vitamin E make this a physical scrub one that you will not regret using. Follow up your peeling chemical exfoliation after a day or two with this and actually see your skin light up. Pretty suitable for most skin types, physical exfoliators can agitate very intense acne or medical conditions, so do try it on a smaller patch of skin before getting down to some serious self care.

Scoop O Scrub The Scalp Scrub

With a combo of sugar, salt, aloe, lavender and tea tree EOs, you’d think you don’t want this stuff in your hair but it’s actually kind of nice. Use a spoonful in your shampoo once a week to cleanse your scalp and hair shafts of product/other buildup and to stimulate follicles. I don’t know if my hair’s growing any faster or thicker, but I do see it look healthier and tolerate styling, if any, better after each use.

Scoop O Scrub Sage
The Hair Oil

This is a combo of a bunch of the usual oils like castor and coconut, but it smells really really nice, goes on quite easy because of its runny consistency, and hair is actually much, much softer and brighter after you wash it out. My scalp and hair health has definitely improved in the last few weeks, and I just want to hang on to the good hair days for as long as I can, so the Scoop O Scrub scalp scrub and oil are on the repurchase list for a long time.

What didn’t work:

The above were purchased together with the Spotless cream by The Skin Theory, which claims to have a nice dose of urea in it to combat among other things, the appearance of keratosis pilaris, which appears as spotty, ingrown-hair-looking skin.

Jenpharm’s Dermive Urea Moisturizer makes a similar claim, and while both moisturizers are hydrating, they did little to assist in controlling my KP, which tends to calm down even with a little bit of apricot kernel oil. Neither moisturizer came cheap either, with what seems to be an average price tag becoming almost astronomical for 50 and 100 ml jar and tube of creams that don’t do their job. Perhaps this was just me though, so if you’ve had a different experience with the brands, I’d love to hear about them.

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