Happy December! It’s the last month of the year and we are gearing up for everything new: new year, new resolutions, new gifts. The holiday season is a fairly big time for shopping, giving and receiving. Whether you’re taking advantage of new sales or just treating yourself, you can easily accumulate a lot of beauty products. Especially as an influencer who works with brands, products can build up and FAST. The reality is you only have one face and it’s really difficult to use all of these products. Here are some tips and tricks for cleaning out your beauty collection so you can either make room for the new stuff or just cut it down to just the basics (or both!).
Stop Buying
It’s plain and simple. There really is no way to get around this tip. Even the window shopping. You’ve got to cut it out. Once I stopped taking trips to Sephora “just to see” what I would put on my makeup or skincare wishlist, it became much easier to realize I had a lot to work with at home. That’s probably a metaphor for life though. You don’t have to announce a dramatic “I’m not going to buy anything for the month of XYZ,” at least not if you feel like you don’t need to do that. But make it a point to address the fact that in order to effectively clean out, you need to commit to not bringing in new things.
Keeping the item closed makes it easy to return or re-gift if you realize it’s actually not necessary for you to have.
Commit To One Product
If you’re anything like me, you like to use multiple products at once, especially when it comes to skincare. The hardest yet most effective part about cleaning out my skincare, was staying committed to using up one product before going to the next one. I started this out with cleansers primarily because I have so many cleansers but I am really not picky about them in general. Doing this makes it easier to work through your products and figure out what you actually need. If you’re an influencer it’s especially good for helping you accurately and effectively review products. Let’s be honest the whole “review after using for 5 days” doesn’t work that well for skincare. Committing to using up the entire bottle or at least enough for you to realize whether you like it, can help you determine whether you actually like it enough to buy a refill later on.
Don’t Open New Items Right Away
This is closely related to the last tip but it is important for a number of reasons. First, if you still have other products (serums, foundations, etc) to work through, you should get through those first. Second, if you decide that you actually don’t need the new product, you can host a giveaway or just donate the product. It’s difficult to give away a product you’ve already opened and used some. Keeping the item closed makes it easy to return or re-gift if you realize it’s actually not necessary for you to have.
In order to effectively clean out, you need to commit to not bringing in new things for at least some time.
Log Your Purchases
Keep some sort of note for when you buy or receive new products. This is especially important because beauty products expire too. There is nothing cute about hoarding makeup that can break you out in a heartbeat, and the same applies for skincare. I don’t have a formal log but I can easily refer back to my purchases through the Sephora app. On top of that I usually post when I receive packages from companies on my IG stories, so I can easily go back to my archives to see when I received it. That when if a product has been sitting around for too long, I know exactly when it’s time to toss it.
Open and Swatch Products
Even if you can’t remember when you bought the product, and especially because products go bad before their expiration date. This is a very easy way to see if the product has gone bad or just isn’t in a state that you’d feel comfortable using. This happens particularly when I don’t consistently use my ColourPop lipsticks and glosses. I can see that they separate and clump in a weird way. I toss those immediately.
“Jesus said to him, “If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” When the young man heard this he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.” Matthew 19: 21-22
