Do you know that you don’t need a lot of toner on your skin? (there’s been a lot of talk on whether you’d actually need to use toner in the first place, but I’ll leave that to another post) I know of people who practically soak their cotton pads with a lot of toner, when in fact, you don’t need that much to remove that last trace of dirt from your skin. Especially if your toner contains alcohol (which I do not recommend using, but hey, if it works for you, it works for you).

Nowadays a lot of toners come in bottles with an additional plastic cap on top, with a hole in the middle to prevent you from pouring too much liquid onto the facial cotton. Before, they didn’t introduce the use of such caps, and most of the time, I’d end up using an unnecessary amount of toner. Previously Clinique didn’t have these hole-y caps, and neither did Neutrogena (another brand of toner which I’ve used). If you weren’t careful in tilting the bottle at just the right angle towards the facial cotton, you’d end up either pouring far too much, thus soaking the entire pad, or worse still, spilling access toner onto your fingers, your dresser, etc.

This isn’t just messy; it’s also very wasteful.

What I like to do with my toner is that even with the hole-y cap on the bottle, I’d decant the toner into a plastic spray bottle. This way, I’d use less of the toner, as needed for my skin. This prevents spillage of liquid, and wastage of toner.

To prove my point, let’s proceed with an experiment, shall we?

My current toner – Clinique’s Clarifying Moisture Lotion 3

The plastic hole-y cap on the bottle

Decanted my toner into a plastic spray bottle

*pours toner directly from the bottle into one cotton pad, and sprays decanted toner onto another cotton pad*

*add cling-clang noises for experiment sound effects*

Voila! And we’re done.

Check out the difference between the two cotton pads below:

This was poured directly from the bottle. And by pour, I meant placing the facial cotton right over the hole tightly, and swinging the bottle twice. You know what I mean?

Toner sprayed twice onto the facial cotton.

See the difference? The first cotton pad is literally soaked with toner. Even though the surface area of the toner seemed small, the liquid soaked the cotton right through. As the second cotton pad, the spray covered a larger surface area of the cotton, but less toner was used.

By decanting my toner into a spray bottle, I use only an adequate amount for my skin. A bottle of Clinique toner lasts me more than a year when decanted. Ahh … what savings, eh? 😉

If your toner already comes in a spray bottle, good for ya! If not, how about giving this method a go? You might find that you won’t need to replace that bottle of toner that quickly after all.

Note: Remember to sanitise the decanter bottle first with some rubbing alcohol before use. Give it a wash, dilute a few drops of rubbing alcohol into a cup of distilled water, pour it into the bottle, give it a few good swirls, pour the contents out, and leave it to dry naturally. If you’re worried about the lingering smell of the alcohol, then use antibacterial wash instead.