Empties: Q4 2024

tl;dr: I smell good and I bought two pounds of Vaseline

Helloooooooo! It’s your girl (me) back with a long-delayed Empties entry. The last time I wrote to you here in Beautyland was September, and then I proceeded to not be in my house for most of the next four months. But! Guess what! I’m at my house now, and I’m writing to you!

For those not in the know, Empties is a series in which I revisit/review the beauty/bath products I’ve finished off recently. You can find prior entries here and here and here! Some of the items in this series are fun frilly products like blush and mascara, some are big-ass tubs of lotion. Variety! The spice of life.

Here is a list of 19 products I’ve finished lately. Can you tell when winter began?

Lush Rhubarb and Custard Soap

How much does it cost? $8.50ish for a 3.5-oz bar

How much did I pay for it? $4

There’s a Lush in the 59th Street (Columbus Circle) subway station. I go every once in a while to get some free smells. On rare occasions, I also buy things, usually the misfit soaps that are marked down by 50% and piled on a table near the front door.

I encountered this Rhubarb and Custard soap on a day when I was grumpy—I can’t recall why; I think I was at 59th street for a meeting which got moved and it messed up my schedule—because I have few problems and a four-dollar treat can fix most of them. I also got free soap from the cashier upon checking out, which is sort of funny to me. It’s like I said “Can I have this soap?” and the Lush lady said “Yes, but it’s emotionally bonded to these smaller soaps, so you must take them as well.”

The rhubarb soap smelled great! But it melted into an oozy goop the moment it got wet. It’s not a bath/shower jelly, I checked, but the moment moisture was introduced, it got…melty. On top of this, it left fluorescent yellow streaks all over my shower (I like this but I can see where it may be a problem for others). Lush products, in my experience, put fragrance over function. In the instance of a soap, this meant that it added good smells to my tender beautiful flesh but did not remove the stinking, horrid smells. In other words, after using this, I smelled like armpit, rhubarb and custard, unless I double-scrubbed with a second, real soap.

Would I buy it again? Nope! Slimy!!! Fell apart on me! Didn’t destinkify me whatsoever!

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Shampoo Massager

How much does it cost? $6.99

How much did I pay for it? Uhhhhhhhh

Okay, so technically…I didn’t buy this for me. I didn’t even buy it to use as a shampoo massager. I got it for my cat.