Quest for perfect skin care

It must be my advancing years or something, but lately my skin has been much drier and more sensitive than usual. This means that the cheap skincare alternative I had been surviving on (Simple) is not doing a good enough job for me.

But I can't go back to the superior stuff I was using before (Shiseido Benefience) because that stuff is definitely in the pre-redundancy price range. A single bottle of moisturer in that range could buy me cafe lunches for a whole week (which would be a nice luxury - I tend to have cheese sammies or dinner leftovers for lunch).

And the stuff I have used in the past (Innoxa) must have changed formula or something, because the last lot irritated my face like undissolved lemon juice on a paper cut.

So, for now, my sewing obsession has faded and in its place is my quest for better skincare. What I want is something that moisturises well - preferably all day, doesn't irritate my skin and doesn't cost more than about $30 per bottle (which should a couple of months).

I got this book out of the library called Don't go to the cosmetics counter without me (or something like that). It's quite bible-like in size and even in the texture of its pages. It's organised alphabetically by brand name and the author rates each brand's cleansers, toners, moisturises and cosmetics according to things like - value for money, presence of sunblock, presence of various high-tech ingredients which have been proven to have some benefit, lack of irritants, etc. There's even a short section at the back which lists which brands are known to be tested on animals, which are known not to be, and which brands are still keeping their animal-testing status secret.

I was interested that the Shiseido Beneficience products I'd like so much were given the thumbs down, because the author thought they were pretty basic for the amount of money they cost. And some of the lower-end brands had products which she rated really well. It's too bad that one of the Ponds products, which rated well and is cheap, is an animal-tested product. It's also a pity that, being an American book, it doesn't include any of the NZ brands, because some of them sound pretty good but are not cheap enough to experiment on.