September Birchbox Review

September is Birchbox's birthday month and this year they celebrated their fifth year of business! They held a Customer Appreciation Day on the 15th and I received a phone call and 500 extra points added to my account. I have always felt that Birchbox had amazing customer service, which is why I've been a subscriber for 35 boxes (and counting)!

*Disclaimer: This box was purchased by See, Shop, Love! Post contains referral links.

This was a pretty good box for me. It wasn't my absolute favorite, but overall I liked my sample selection.

• PARLOUR by Jeff Chastain Moisturizing & Repairing Shampoo ($2.75 for 1 fl oz) - I don't love the scent of the PARLOUR products, but this shampoo really did make my hair feel soft and smooth.
• PARLOUR by Jeff Chastain Moisturizing & Repairing Conditioner ($1.12 for .41 fl oz) - I also really liked how soft the conditioner made my hair feel. Both products worked really well together so I would probably purchase them despite not loving the scent.
• ModelCo Ultra Long-Lasting Lipstick ($6.67 for .12 oz, full-sized) - The retail value for this probably isn't exact; these are sold as a trio on the Birchbox site for $20 so I just divided that by three. Anyway, I got the shade "Smitten," which is a nice dark red that's perfect for fall and winter. It felt a little dry on my lips, but it did have good staying power.

Here's a closeup of the ModelCo lipstick. It was smudged when I opened it, but I didn't really care because it wasn't totally broken or ruined.

• Harvey Prince Sincerely ($1.62 for .05 fl oz) - I received a bigger bottle of this in a different box this month and I just don't love it. There's too much freesia and it's too floral overall.
• Sumbody Detox Cleanser ($2.21 for .34 fl oz) - This was my favorite sample this month. It's a charcoal-infused cleanser that's perfect for my oily skin. The sample packaging is horrible (you know how you have to smack the bottom of those glass ketchup bottles to get any ketchup out? That's what you have to do with this), but I would absolutely buy a full-sized tube of this.
• POP Beauty POP Portfolio Eyeshadow Palette - I'm not going to bother trying to get the retail value of this. The full-sized palette costs $26. I won't use any of these shades because they're too cool for my undertones, but it's a good item to post for swap.

Bottom Line: Not counting the POP palette, my box had an approximate retail value of $14.37, so I think it would probably be around $20 if I bothered to calculate the eyeshadow in. I don't really pay too much attention to retail value with Birchbox, though, because I'm usually pretty happy with the samples they send me, and this box was no different!