Why The Original Makeup Eraser Will Make You Ditch Your Cleanser

One of the downsides of being a lifelong beauty enthusiast is that you become picky. Very picky. I, for example, am nearly impossible to please when it comes to facial cleansers. I hate having to use a makeup remover before washing my face, so I want something that can take it all off — eye makeup included — without stinging or stripping or leaving those ground-in makeup smudges around my eyes. That doesn't sound too demanding to me, but few cleansers have ever lived up to my exacting standards. I started to wonder, What if what I really want isn't a cleanser at all? (Why yes, I did say this in a Carrie Bradshaw voiceover tone, thanks for asking.)

"Removes Your MakeUp with Just Water!" promises the box of The Original MakeUp Eraser. Sounds like magic, right? But I've been burned by fancy promises before, so I was still skeptical when I pulled the hot-pink, 100 percent polyester cloth out of its package. In my hand, it was unremarkable. A little over a foot long, it had the plush softness of a teddy bear with a short, fuzzy texture on one side and a longer, fuzzier texture on the other. It was also really aggressively pink. It was being pink at me (for those who don't go for the Barbie vibe, the cloth also comes in light blue, red, and black). "I'm about to wash my face with a Muppet," I said to myself, this time not in a Carrie Bradshaw voice.

The instructions are almost disconcertingly simple: You're supposed machine-wash the cloth before the first use, then completely soak it in warm water and rub the short side over your face in a circular motion until your makeup disappears (the long side is meant for exfoliation). Ta-da! No cleanser, no toner, no 286-step Korean cleansing plan. Could it really be that easy?

Being an impatient person (and also an apartment dweller in New York City, where laundry comes at a premium) I decided to forgo the first step (yes, there are only three steps, and I ignored one — I color outside the lines) of machine-washing and instead spent a few minutes thoroughly hand-washing the cloth. In retrospect, I realize this was a mistake, because thorough as I was, I still found myself pulling little bits of fuzz off of my face in the end. Lesson learned: Wash with a Muppet; do not become one.

Having washed and dried the MakeUp Eraser, that night I set about the actual face-cleansing process. Soaking the cloth with warm water proved to be slightly more challenging that it sounds, since the polyester tends to repel the moisture unless you really dunk it and scrub it around with your hands. I then wrung it out just enough so that it didn't drip all over the floor as I washed my face. It took me a second to figure out which side I was supposed to use — the short and long fibers aren't drastically different lengths — but once I did, the washing was easy. The soft nap of the wet fabric tugged ever so slightly at my skin and, of course, the makeup on my skin, but it wasn't rough at all. As I moved it in slow circles, the cloth did indeed seem to lift away makeup like magic, though I did have to stop twice to rewet it.

The eye makeup was slightly trickier, or maybe it's just that after years of using balms and cleansers, it felt rubbing a cloth across my eyes felt stranger than rubbing it over the rest of my face. Because of my mascara, concealer, and eye-shadow primer, the cloth had more drag over my eyes and it took a bit more work to get every scrap of makeup off. But I did get it all off — even the little traces of mascara down by the roots that I usually wake up to find smudged over my eyelids the next morning — without a drop of cleanser in sight. It was pretty impressive, actually.

Left behind on the cloth was a fairly unappealing layer of grunge that immediately made me rethink my machine-washing laziness. The company says that given the length of the cloth, you should be able to use a small section of it each day and make it last up to a week between washings, but clearly I did not plan ahead well enough for that.

Just to see if my face really were as clean as it looked, I soaked a cotton ball in toner and swiped it over my skin. The results were pretty clean, though not completely spotless, which was probably fine for a few nights but wouldn't be my ideal for every day. Still, I resisted the urge to soap up. I was also slightly worried about that tugging. I've been told many times by experts that tugging at the skin can cause collagen breakdown and lead to wrinkles, which I am so not here for.

As for the exfoliation side of the eraser, after trying both sides, I honestly can't say that I could tell much of a difference. For sensitive-skin types, this could be a boon, but for a hard-core exfoliation junkie like me, it just did not scratch my scrubbing itch. Still, overall the cloth did a pretty solid job. For those looking to get away from chemicals in cleansers, this would certainly do the job. I don't know that I'd go so far as to ditch my whole cleanser collection, but I definitely plan on sticking a MakeUp Eraser in my suitcase for my next trip — it's way easier to carry than those tiny travel bottles of cleanser that take up space and explode midflight. With the up to 1,000 washes the brand promises from each cloth, that's a lot of vacations.