My 5 favourite bath and body products in 2009.

This list was a bit harder than the others, because although I buy a lot of bath and body products (well, shower - we don't have a bath), I tend to buy the same things over and over and have done for years. I don't really branch out much, so there's not a huge amount that I tried for the first time in 2009. However, I did manage to find a few new favourites.

5. Palmer's Dark Chocolate and Peppermint Lip Butter. I'm not a lip balm person, for the same reason I'm not really a lip gloss person. I don't like sticky things on my lips. However, I bought this on a whim at my local IGA one day because my lips were feeling a bit dry and also, I am the World's Most Highly Suggestible Impulse Buyer. It was less than $5, and I figured I'd just throw it in my handbag and - let's face it - probably hardly ever use it. As it turned out, I loved it, and now I have it within reach constantly.

4. Mrs Meyers Dryer Sheets. Okay, technically these are not a bath or body product, but I just had to get them in somewhere, because I love them so damn much. In Australia, you can get one brand of dryer sheets, and they suck. They don't work very well and they stink of really cheap fabric softener. The Mrs Meyers ones, on the other hand, have very little scent at all, and work a treat for getting the static out of your clothes. Unfortunately, it costs me (considerably) more in shipping than it does for the product itself, but I've come to terms with that. These are so good I will pay pretty much anything to get hold of them.

3. The Garden Bath Lemon Chiffon Cleansing Sugar Body Scrub. Generally speaking, a scrub is a scrub is a scrub to me, but I do prefer the soapy ones to the creamy or oily ones (again, it's that whole feeling sticky thing - I have a real issue with that). This is a soapy one, and it feels great on the skin, but my true reason for loving it so much is the smell. It's like sugary lemon custard, but without a hint of the egginess that is often present in custard. Like the filling of a vanilla slice. If it was lemon. Gorgeous.

2. Palmer's Cocoa Butter Formula Moisturising Hand Wash. I wash my hands A LOT. It probably stems from years of working in customer service and handling hundreds of dirty forms, pens, computers, and so on. I've become a bit of a germophobe over the last couple of decades. Consequently my hands are always trashed and dry. Then of course, with the whole not-liking-stickiness thing I have to force myself to use hand cream, even though I really dislike it. This hand wash helps a lot with not drying my hands out so much, and I have been able to reduce the amount of cream I have to slather on them since I began using it. Also, it smells like chocolate! Even Noodle Arms like this stuff - it's amazing seeing her wash her hands vountarily.

1. Terax Crema. I have always had very straight, very fine hair, but until a few years ago, I had quite a lot of it. My hair has thinned considerably in recent years (much to my alarm), and this has made it quite limp and unmanageable, and very much lacking in body. It had never occurred to me to use Terax Crema before - I'd always considered it a product for people with thick and/or curly hair - but I received a free sample with an online order from Adore Beauty and fell instantly in love with it. It's expensive, but I only need a small amount so it lasts a long time. It makes my hair soft and shiny, and even better, it's still soft and shiny the following day, so I don't have to wash it daily, and that makes it last even longer. This is possibly my favourite product of all for the year (maybe even all time) - I just love it to death.

Tomorrow - fragrances. I am struggling to narrow that list down to five, let me tell you.