WARNING! WARNING! If you shop Sephora like a fish breathes water, you may not like this post 😉
When I was in high school, one of my best friends loved buying those train cases of makeup that always come out around the holidays. You know – the ones with 30 eye shadows, 10 lipsticks, and a blush for every skin tone under the sun. She’d stripe her eyes like a rainbow-colored zebra with 5 or 6 shades at a time. This girl had a lot of makeup. I always wondered how she stored it all.
I’ve always been a more basic kind of girl when it comes to makeup, but those beautiful pots of shimmery shadows are oh so tempting! More than once, I found myself with a basket full of makeup and no good way to store it.
In my quest for Simplicity, I’m always looking for ways to declutter and get rid of excess. So it was only a matter of time before I set my sites on my makeup collection. Here are my 3 best tips for decluttering your makeup collection:
- Toss old or expired products. The shelf life on most products is 3 years. (Mascara should be replaced 3 months from its date of first use.) Regardless of age, if your makeup has a hard, shiny film on the surface, it’s too old.
- Get rid of unflattering shades. We’ve all bought makeup that looked great in the store but made us look like death warmed over when we wore it. Don’t keep it. Your skin tone’s not going to magically change overnight and make it look OK.
- Limit your color palette. Here’s where the Sephora hits the fan 😉 But going by the 80/20 Principle we discussed yesterday regarding your wardrobe, you probably wear only 20% of your makeup 80% of the time. That means you can get rid of 80% of your makeup and hardly miss it. Like the wardrobe challenge, I invite you to conduct an experiment. No commitments. Just try it. Put most of your makeup in a box under your sink and see how it goes.
When it comes to eye shadows, I keep 3 everyday colors: a highlight, a midtone, and an accent color. I also have a set (again, a trio) of more dramatic colors to do a smoky eye for a night out. I always wear the same blush, though sometimes I’ll use a darker shade for some sculpting and shading. As far as lipsticks, I generally keep a bright shade, a nude shade, and a red.
I love Mary Kay’s makeup line, because they’re great quality, they last a long time, and they store fabulously. I keep everything in a compact so it’s all together in one place. Nothing gets lost or broken this way. They have several different sizes of compacts, and they’re completely customizable. (In the interest of full disclosure, I must say I’m a bit biased toward this company since I’m an independent representative for them. But I work with them because I love them, and I’d never recommend something I didn’t whole-heartedly endorse.)
