With all the various stresses of the past few weeks (I won’t bore you with the details, but the Dexter Dog catastrophe has been only one of many worries!) my beauty routine has gone out of the window. I’ve been using whatever has been next to my sink, which has mostly been the three products below. Actually, I only got the Sunday Riley eye cream recently, so that’s a new addition, before that I was slathering on my Clarins Extra Firming eye cream. (Rich, buttery, great for dried-out and crinkly undereyes. You can find it online here.) But you get the gist, at any rate.

I can’t say that my skin has suffered, particularly, for the lack of umpteen ritualistic steps and hydrating serums and acid toners and AHA peels and deep cleansing masks, but there are definitely a couple of little rough patches that I can’t wait to iron out and I have missed steeping in the bath with a face mask on. But overall, this simple little three-product routine has kept my skin pretty balanced and calm and I’ve enjoyed stripping things back to basics. The smell of both the cleanser and moisturiser are gorgeous and I find them both to be brilliantly effective; the REN cleanser does remove all dirt and makeup but feels gentle and non-stripping, the MV Organic Skincare Rose Soothing and Protecting Moisturiser (here) adds just enough moisture to the skin without overloading it. Dry skin might need a little more, but for my combination skin it’s just perfect.

I wrote about the REN Rosa Centifolia cleansing balm not so long ago, you can read about it in the November Skincare Favourites (or find it online here); the MV moisturiser also featured recently but I just can’t give it enough air-time. It’s so clean-feeling and light on my skin, but incredibly nourishing at the same time. The £75 price-tag does initially seem frightening, but it’s a 70ml bottle making it no more pricey than the average cream from Estee Lauder or similar. It took me a while to love this; it’s an odd texture at first and isn’t the quickest to absorb, but it has become one of my most-used products of the year. Full details and ingredients list over on Cult Beauty.

The jury is still out on Start Over from Sunday Riley – I nabbed it out of the Cult Beauty gift-with-purchase I was photographing because I have really liked everything from Sunday Riley so far. (Take a look at this feature from earlier in the year.) It seems perfectly serviceable, but I haven’t been using it for long enough to give a proper verdict. So watch this space! (It’s worth noting that my 10ml sample (above) has a rather good stainless steel applicator that massages the undereye and cools it at the same time – the real, full-size one doesn’t seem to have this.)