I’ve found it. I have officially found the 1 missing piece in my skin care routine. Holy grail, thy name is the konjac sponge.

Yes, that gnarly looking lump is the new love of my life. The konjac sponge, like so many of the “Hot! New!” beauty trends, has a long history. Konjac is actually a root vegetable, historically known for its medicinal properties and high fiber content.  The same fibers that you eat are the very ones that compose the konjac sponge. Though the sponge looks like a rock when it’s dry, when it’s wet and ready to use (seriously, don’t use it dry), it takes on a velvety soft, squishy and almost gel-like texture. Give it a squish real quick. I’ll wait.

The Claims

1. Gently exfoliates your skin. 
2. It cleanses your skin, including taking off your makeup.
3. It’s biodegradable. So it’s good for the environment but that also means it needs to be replaced.

The sponges come in a few different varieties but my favorite konjac sponge owes its black coloring to the activated charcoal woven into its fibers. Activated charcoal is purported to draw the impurities out of your skin. Purportedly, the amount of activated charcoal woven into the fibers of this sponge is not enough to actually do the job, but I SWEAR my acne-prone skin has not been as “prone” since I started using the konjac sponge.

I’ve found that I’ve used far less cleanser since starting with the sponge. The lathering action is fantastic and the cleanser gets distributed all throughout the sponge and then all over your face and seriously when you are rubbing this soft and squishy sponge over your face, you just KNOW that something interesting is happening. It’s when you rinse it out that the real shocker comes: you very well might SEE the dead skin that this sponge has sloughed off of your face. It’s gross. It’s fascinating. It, in combination with my skin care, of course, has led to the smoothest skin of my life.

Handle this sponge with care, though. Smush it gently between your hand to get the extra moisture out after each use and hang it somewhere to dry. You want to dry it out between each use because it’s damp and dark and letting that fester all day leads to….ewww.

Get your Konjac sponge here. Tell me, have you used this before? Did you love it, loathe it?