I have a serious love-hate relationship with traveling. I love being somewhere else, I hate the process of getting there, ya know? I mean I HATE the airport, but whatever, there’s not really a way around it so I just wait with dignity for the torture to end.

For me the bigger pain in the bum has always been packing my beauty products. I know you can buy travel items, but they don’t make all my products in travel size AND they still leak sometimes. Plus, those little travel bottles never hold enough to wash my giant mop of hair.

For the most part I have it all figured out. I have a whole ziplock bag system, and it works well. (I’ll do a post on that sometime maybe? Let me know if you want to see that!) The only thing I never figured out how to store properly is nail polish remover. I need to bring nail polish remover with me if I’m going to be away for more than 3 nights because my nails chip really fast. The problem is that every single time I bring it, it leaks.

In case you were wondering why that’s a big deal with my ziplock bag system in place, nail polish remover melts plastic, including ziplock bags.

As seen here, it also melts the side of your Clarisonic. This was my breaking point. “Melt my Clarisonic once, shame on you…”

Recently, knowing that I was going to be away for a few days I decided to try nail polish remover wipes. I figured I would shell out the extra couple of bucks for nicer ones from Sephora because quite frankly I was skeptical that any of those things work so I figured better quality would have a better chance of working.

So I got myself some Josie Maran BearNaked Nail Wipes. I was already skeptical but when I saw that they worked by dissolving the polish with oil I was absolutely convinced that I wasted nine bucks and I was going to have to live with jacked up nails until I got home.

To my surprise, they actually worked. As a matter of fact one wipe took off all ten nails as it claimed on the package. I literally laughed out loud when I read that, but they weren’t screwing around, you really can just use one.

Now let me be clear, it took a long time and a lot of rubbing to get all the polish off. I had a normal amount of polish on (base coat, two coats of color and top coat) and it took around 25 minutes to remove everything. It seemed like nothing was happening at first and then the polish was just gone, really strange and slow but effective. It was tedious at best, but at least it worked.

It also left my nails and cuticles looking really good, I mean you are rubbing Argan oil into them for 25 minutes, so I guess that’s no surprise. Thats a nice side effect when traveling because you probably could use a little extra TLC on your cuticles anyway, considering that plane rides and different water can really dry you out.

I was concerned that the added oil would cause my fresh polish to chip after using them, but I made sure I washed my hands well with soap before applying a new color, and it seemed to hold up ok considering that I was on the beach and in the pool a lot.

They also smell really nice, like citrus. So you can take your polish off in a room full of people and nobody will be mad at you for stinking out the place with chemicals.

The bottom line is, these are great for what I bought them for. They are easy to travel with because there is no acetone to spill in your suitcase, and they help keep your nails and cuticles looking pretty while you’re away from home.

However, would I buy them for everyday use? No way. It is really impressive that one wipe can take off all your polish, but still at twenty wipes for nine dollars it is still way more expensive than regular polish remover. Also, to be honest there is no chance in hell that I have 20 minutes to spare every time I want to take my polish off.

When I came home I decided to try them out on glitter polish just to see what they could do, and I needed two wipes for that, and it took a really long time. Like 35 minutes. So these are definitely not an everyday product for me.

So I would recommend buying them if you need them for travel, and then just leave them in your travel bag so you never forget your nail polish remover on a trip again. You’ll be really happy they’re in there next time.