The skincare industry told me I needed seventeen products. I tried twelve steps. I spent a lot of money. My dermatologist suggested I stop. She was right.
At my peak, I owned forty-three skincare products. I know the exact number because I counted them in March of last year when I was looking for my passport and found them instead, lined up on the bathroom shelf, in the cabinet under the sink, and in a basket on the floor that had migrated there from the original shelf when the shelf ran out of room.Forty-three products. A vitamin C serum and a backup vitamin C serum for when the first one oxidizes. Three different moisturizers because I had read that you need different weights for different seasons, and I live in a state with four seasons. A peptide serum, a retinol, two different SPFs, and an eye cream I had bought after a very persuasive TikTok at midnight.My skin was fine. Not great — I had the same combination skin I had always had, with the same constellation of concerns I had been attempting to address since my late twenties. But fine. Approximately as fine as it had been before I started accumulating products, which was the thing my dermatologist pointed out when I showed her my routine."This is a lot," she said."I know," I said. "Which parts are working?"She looked at my face for a moment. "The SPF," she said. "And probably the retinol. The rest of this—" she gestured at the list I had typed out on my phone, "—is mostly spending money."


The Industry That Skincare Became

Skincare in 2026 is a $200 billion global industry, a figure I find both staggering and, in retrospect, unsurprising. The industry has succeeded in turning something genuinely important — protecting and maintaining the largest organ of your body — into a lifestyle, a hobby, a form of self-improvement with no defined endpoint.
There is always a new ingredient. In 2024, it was tranexamic acid. In 2025, it was PDRN, derived from salmon DNA, which went from Korean dermatology clinics to Sephora shelves in approximately 18 months. In 2026, the conversations are about chrono-peptides and microbiome support. Each new ingredient arrives with the implicit message that your current routine is missing something essential, which is the engine that keeps the purchasing cycle running.
Skincare maximalism sold us the dream of transformation. What my dermatologist sold me was something less exciting and more true: consistency with a few good things beats novelty with many mediocre ones.

What I Actually Did

I did not throw everything out. I finished the retinol, which is genuinely effective and backed by decades of peer-reviewed research. I kept one SPF, a mineral one that my dermatologist approved. I kept a simple moisturizer — one, not three. I stopped using the vitamin C serum because she told me the formulation I had was probably already oxidized and therefore useless, and when I looked at the color, I had to admit she was right.
I set a rule: nothing new until something ran out. When the moisturizer ran out, I would replace it with the same thing, not research whether something better had launched.
The first month was uncomfortable, as any reduction is when you have built a ritual around the thing being reduced. My routine had been twenty minutes in the morning. It was now three minutes. The three minutes felt wrong, like I was skipping something, even though what I was skipping was redundant.

One Year Later

My skin is the same. I want to be honest about this because the genre demands a transformation, and I do not have one to offer. My skin is still combination. I still get the occasional breakout. The texture concerns I hoped various serums would address remain at approximately the same level as before.
What is different is that I spend roughly $80 a year on skincare instead of several hundred, and I have 37 fewer products, reducing anxiety on my bathroom shelf. The products I use are actually used every day. The routine is so simple, I never skip it.
My dermatologist says my skin barrier is healthier than it was when she first saw me, which she attributes to using fewer potentially irritating products. I attribute it to the same thing and to the fact that I am no longer standing in front of my bathroom mirror for 20 minutes at 6 am, feeling vaguely inadequate about my pores.
That part, it turns out, was costing me more than the products were. In the end, I gained more peace of mind than I ever did from another bottle on the shelf. It would be really interesting to see if there are a lot of women out there that have the same problem with their beauty products.