favorite face wash: neutrogena acne stress control power-cream wash

you might have noticed that my posts have been less than sporadic lately. i have a super good reason for my flakiness too: my skin went haywire this summer! you don't exactly feel like taking pictures of yourself and putting them out there for the world to see when you have a sudden bout of acne all over your face.... you ladies with acne know what i mean, right?


i don't really know what happened to my face.... as a teenager i never really struggled very much with acne.... just a couple little blemishes every now and then. i think i remember having a huge monster zit only once in high school.... so why did my skin wait until i was almost graduated from college to freak out on me?? who knows. i had painful, monster zits everywhere. and i hadn't really changed my routine at all. i was so excited when my husband bought me my clarisonic mia for graduation, hoping that it would solve all of my problems. it definitely makes my face smooth, but didn't really clear up (or prevent) the random acne. that st. ives green tea scrub felt nice, but i guess the 1% salicylic acid wasn't cutting it.


then one day a little over a month ago, i saw an ad in a magazine for neutrogena's acne stress control face wash (with 2% salicylic acid), which claims to prevent most acne from even surfacing! i was too curious not to try it. so i did.

about $6 or $7, depending on where you buy it

last month around the time of my period my skin was awful. it took me like 30 min. every day to cover up all of the red spots with makeup.... but when i started using this cleanser, i noticed that slowly, my spots started disappearing. the redness started fading too. i was using less concealer. and you know, the big nasty zips have never come back! it's almost magical. it really keeps big zits from popping up! i still have the occasional little bump that's not really a zit, but that's what my skin in high school looked like anyway. glad to have you back, old skin.

i couldn't be happier with this face wash. the actual product is mint green, like the packaging, smells clean and awesome, and has a great tingle. i use it once in the morning and once at night with my clarisonic. i know skincare is very personal, in that what works for me may not work for you, but you may want to try it if you have frustrating acne like i did!

i actually just found a coupon for $1 off a neutrogena cleanser, so i'm gonna go buy another tube today!!