Some Beauty & Makeup DON'T DOs - Learned from Bitter Experience :) [PART 1]

We all have some lessons to share when it comes to beauty and makeup Don't Do's. I am adding some of mine, cos I just learned something from this weekend, so things are bit fresh :)  
1. DON'T use soaps or harsh cleansers on face - it dries out the skin and ages you pretty badly.  My suggestion - Go for gentle cleansers if at all you need to use one. I prefer to use cleansing oils, baby wipes and cleansing creams. Even regular cold creams would help. 
2.  DON'T skimp on drinking water or on sleep. Your skin will be one of the major victims. 
My suggestion - Keep a small bottle of water in your bag always, so you can refill and keep drinking it. I keep mobile alarms to alert me to drink every 45mins. This is especially important for ladies staying in colder or drier parts of the world.  For Sleep, well, no quick fixes - you gotta sleep. 
You can improve the effectiveness of your sleep by avoiding tea/caffeine etc, by drinking some warm milk with turmeric 15mins before sleep and by spraying some lavender drops on your pillow for a good sleep. 
3. DON'T eat very oily foods if you wish to keep your face acne free My suggestion - It is not very realistic probably to skip oily food forever. However, try to avoid it before sleep because the fat may not get processed very well.  Also, if you have an event or function happening in 2 days, skip on oily and fatty food to avoid getting a pimple on the day!
4. DON'T eat salty food if you suffer from a bloated morning face My suggestion - Again, try restricting salty food at night. As a best practise, avoid salt at least 3-4 hours before sleep. If you do wake up with a bloated face, use an ice pack to slowly massage your face.  Another way to help tone your face is to try the GUA SHA face massaging technique [ you can easily find videos online]
5. DON'T sleep with makeup on - at the worst or at the laziest, remove your eye makeup. My suggestion - We all have days when all we want is to crawl to bed and to hell with cleaning up. However, your skin will suffer very very very badly for missing that 15min of cleansing. 
At the worst, remove your eye makeup. Eyes are most sensitive part of your face - so if nothing else, keep em clean. If you are out for a party or for a night event, make sure you keep some facial wipes handy and clean your eye makeup when you start feeling tired.  For me it is around 10-11pm at night. This way, even if you are totally blacked out at the end of the day, your eyes will be clean & SAFE. The downside is that may be your makeup looks a bit incomplete, upside is your eyes will thanks you always and always.
6. DON'T use a night cream or night-specific use item for day use. My suggestion - Too obvious? Well, it might happen. At least , it did to me. Creams/Serums/Treatments etc meant for night may have stronger sun-sensitive chemicals that can turn bad or affect your skin if used in the day time.  The best way is to separate your night kit from your day stuff. Also, whenever you buy a serum etc, make sure you check to see when it is advisable to use it. If it says morning and night then good. 
7. DON'T wear a lip gloss [at least not the sticky type] if you have long hair and is wearing it loose.  My suggestion: Sure, models look great when walking along with hair fluttering in breeze. In real life, this means your hair can easily can catch dirt or even worse - your lip gloss.  What I do is - I carry a bandana or hair band so I can use it if it gets too windy. Also, if you are going out and you've not used a super hold hair spray or so, I suggest wearing your hair in a nice up-do. 
8. DON'T ever try a new product the day before a major event.  My suggestion: Some times even the best brand product can break you out or cause a reaction. You never know. May be the product was something lying a shelf for a long long time. Who knows!  The safest way is to try and test something at least a week before a major function. This gives your skin and you enough time to recover from any possible reactions.
9. DON'T ever take a risk in using an expired product My suggestion: As soon as you buy a product and open it, make an entry some where. I use an excel sheet to track. Most products have their best-before tags on the bottle jars etc. Check this website for more information - http://checkcosmetic.net/  Also use some thumb rules - Mascaras for 3months, eyeliners for 6 months etc. If you have a product  in your kit you're not sure of, throw it away - it is not worth risking your skin & health.  At the worst - do this at least for all eye and lip products. 



And finally the one that prompted this article :)
10. DON'T ever trust brand products at super cheap prices. My suggestion: Need a MAC lipstick but don't want to shell out $15? Then go drugstore and get a nice NYC or NYX lipstick. That would be safer than buying from a website where you can get 'MAC' for $5! Remember that if some one is selling a product worth $15 at $5, there is usually a good reason - like being a cheap knock-off or an expired product. 
Incident in question:  I pride myself on not buying from such places but I almost became a victim when I saw this discount store where they were selling 'high-end cosmetics at drug store prices'. I saw this set of MAC lipsticks for $5 each and I asked the SA how they got that.  She told me that they were products where the packaging had a defect but then the product itself is exactly the same.  Somehow I didn't trust that very much, so I was just hanging around when I heard a lady enter into argument with the SA.  She actually had a MAC shade in hand, that was also on display. She kept them side by side and swatched them and suddenly nothing looked same. The swatches were so different that the SA was struggling to find justifications.  Finally she hit on - 'You have an older lipstick. This is the latest one'. Well, even she didn't seem to believe it! As I left the store, I could hear the indignant lady demanding that the fake lippies be taken off the shelf - I hope it happened, but some how I doubt it!
 Anyways I have a long list, so expect a part 2 or may be even a part 3! :)