Three wash days, one bottle: testing shampoo claims honestly
Shampoo marketing promises transformation in seven days. So I gave one mid-range bottle three honest wash days — same water, same routine, no other new products — and kept notes. Day one: fine. Day two: genuinely fine. Day three: exactly as fine as the cheap bottle it replaced.
The conclusion of every haircare experiment we've run on this blog: hair type matters more than price tier, and nobody's hair type is on the front of the bottle.
The second shelf is where products go to prove they deserve the first one.
Formulas · October 12, 2026 · by Marta
Playing well together: the ingredient pairs that actually matter
The internet will tell you certain ingredients "cancel each other out" if used in the same week. We asked a cosmetic chemist friend which pairings actually matter. Her shortlist was much shorter than the forums suggest: retinoids and strong acids on the same night, and that's mostly a irritation-management call, not chemistry collapsing.
Practical takeaway: morning and evening slots solve 90% of ingredient anxiety. The remaining 10% is marketing.
The Drawer · October 5, 2026 · by June
An audit of the almost-finished bottles
Every six months we empty the drawer of bottles with less than a finger of product left and count. This time: eleven survivors, four of which had been "almost finished" at the last audit too. Two had separated. One had quietly expired in 2023.
The rule going forward: if a bottle stays almost-finished for two audits, it's finished. No ceremony, no guilt — that's the whole point of keeping a ledger instead of a shrine.
Notes · September 28, 2026 · by June
Travel sizes are the real product testers
The minis bin at the store is the most underrated testing lab in beauty. For the price of one full product you can try three candidates for a fortnight each. We've stopped buying full sizes of anything new entirely — minis first, always, and about two in three never graduate.