Holy Grail: Sanctuary Polishing Hot Cloth Cleanser

"Here may be found the last words of Joseph of Aramathia. He who is valiant and pure of spirit may find the holy grail in the Castle of Aaauuuggghhh... "

Whenever anyone in beauty land mentions a Holy Grail product I always think of Monty Python, does anyone else?

Anyway, this Grail is that of The Sanctuary, their Polishing Hot Cloth Cleanser to be precise. Usually when you see Hot Cloth Cleanser and Holy Grail next to each other you will see "Liz Earle" somewhere near by, but I am afraid that you wont find a rave about that product here. I have never tried it, and at the moment I don't feel the need to because I am put off by the scent. The Sanctuary is plenty enough for me. 

I have read posts where people have compared the ingredients lists of the two products and found barely a difference, but I haven't got access to them myself so I can't speak on that point, but it certainly seems to me that this is a cheaper, more accessible version of a hot cloth cleanser that may or may not do exactly the same thing. I can tell you that the Sanctuary cleanser contains several naturally derived oils, such as beeswax, cocoa butter, hops, coconut, jojoba, chamomile, grapefruit, and flax seed oils.

Now I have talked about this before but I felt it needed a shiny post just because it is so awesome. 

This cleanser works the same as most hot cloth cleansers, you wet your face (or not, I prefer to dampen mine) and then slather some of the cream on, put the included muslin cloth under a hot tap and place it over your face for a few seconds to steam it, then buff off the product with the cloth, and rinse. 

I normally do this twice, just because I love the clean feeling I get, and because it is amazing at unblocking my pores when I do so.

That is the main selling point to this product for me, nothing else gets my pores so clean, I can physically tell if I dont use this for a couple of days because my skin becomes congested and I have to do the whole face mask shebang, which is more work than I can be bothered with normally. I also always use this as a second time run to take off my eye makeup even though it doesn't actually state that you can on the bottle, it has never caused me any adverse drying or stinging, so I will continue to do so as it always takes off every last scrap. I believe part of the reason I don't react to it on my eyes is because it barely has a scent, there is the faintest natural scent there, but it isn't overpowering and doesn't make me feel nauseous.  

This stuff is so easy to get hold of, it is stocked even in my little Boots near work, and often on offer which means I spend around £5.50 a tube on this stuff, an absolute bargain for a wonder product in my opinion.

I am tempted to get a Clarisonic to see if I can make this product even better, but at the moment I don't honestly need it so it would be an unnecessary expense, it would be interesting to see if it too is made better with the contraption like its herbal cousin.

The only negative I have so far is that I can't find a mini version for when I travel. There is one in a gift set, but I don't need the rest of the stuff, so it would be a waste of money. I am still searching though!

All in all, I love this product and will continue to use it for a while yet.

Have you tried this cleanser? Would you be willing to give it a go?

xo