I have spring cleaning fever and it’s hit my beauty stash hard! Yesterday I shared a look at my nail polish purge efforts. I am continuing my beauty purge reveal today with the rest of my products, including skincare, hair care, bath & body products, and cosmetics.
All of the items in the photo above are either to donate, toss, give away to family and friends, or store until needed (specifically the empty organizers). I’m very excited with how much I was able to weed out of my beauty stash! I give in-depth before and descriptive after tours of my bathroom cabinets and drawers as well as my vanity in my coordinating video below in which I share details about my process and how I whittled down my total toiletries and cosmetics stash by at least a third. I thought I would share just a few before and after photos here highlighting some of my favorite results and briefly discussing my process in case you’re not in the mood to watch one of my (typically) long videos.
Toiletries Purge
I used elements from the KonMari Method to sort through all of my bathroom beauty products, mainly the big tip of piling everything onto the floor for that shock value effect. This also allowed me to make better decisions on what I needed/wanted to keep since I could see everything in one place for comparison. I did the most purging of my hair care products and tools, since I’ve accumulated them over the years experimenting with ways to deal with and style my baby fine hair. I was able to part with so many of these in particular, because of my experiences with trying them, which have informed on what types of products and tools work best for my hair.
One of my favorite bathroom transformations is the corner set of drawers I keep on the ample ledge surrounging my tub. I used to go pretty crazy buying LUSH bath products and had an overly intricate storage method of keeping them in indiviual plastic containers in this piece. That phase passed and even though I haven’t used this storage method in a couple of years now, I still had the empty containers stored in these drawers, forcing me to store things unnecessarily on top of the unit. What a waste of space! I finally cleared out the containers, cleaned off the top of the drawer unit, and was able to tuck everything easily inside with room to spare! Now I keep my LUSH products which I mostly receive as gifts from my DH in a box in the top drawer. It looks and feels cleaner and less cluttered in my bathroom with just a few small tweaks.
Cosmetics Purge
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The amount of hair care products I had couldn’t hold a candle to the number of lip products in my stash. What can I say, I love my lippies! Just like with my nail polish collection, however, a couple of years ago I started to notice that I had way more lip products than I needed or even really wanted. Very gradually I pared this down from two fully packed 5-Drawer Acrylic Cases (from Muji) to one and a half as of last weekend, but I knew that more had to go. I am ecstatic that I was able to get it all down to just one 5-drawer organizer. Believe me, I know this is still a crazy amount of lip products, but it feels right to me in this moment, and that’s what matters most.
I was also pleased after my purging efforts to be able to fit all of my other makeup items into just one side of my Hampton Vanity Tower Set (from PBTeen) instead of filling up more than half of the other side, as well. Makeup and all beauty products in general are a very personal thing and are kind of like tools for a favorite hobby in my experience. I acknowledge I had (and still have tendencies towards) a bad habit of accumulating too much, but it can be hard to resist when it’s so much fun to experiment and play with new things. Now that I’ve gone through that phase (which for me was mostly in my late twenties) and know better what my style and preferences are, I feel more naturally inclined to have less and am pickier about what I purchase. I can see this trend continuing with time and experience and have a strong feeling that my beauty stash will certainly not get so out of hand again and will likely continue to shrink to reflect my tried and true favorites over the years. That’s the hope, at least!
I hope this synopsis and little peak at my beauty purge efforts gave you a sense of my process and what’s working for me right now. If you’re in the mood for one of my detailed videos and would like to see more about how I pared down my products grab a beverage and a snack and get comfy to watch my coordinating video:
I understand that even post purge it seems like I have a lot of beauty products, and I concur that I do, but please keep in mind that I am exploring my needs and desires when it comes to outfitting my personal style on my own terms. It is easy to compare oneself to others, boasting that having x amount of any given thing is better than what someone else has, but it’s really neither fair nor accurate to judge someone in this way when you can never live in their skin and know what suits them. We can only truly know what works for ourselves, and finding this out requires trial and error. I choose to share my purging process with you in the hopes that it might inspire you in some way.
As I mention in the video, I am purging my home this year one space per month (give or take). Next month I plan to attack my home office, specifically targeting my books, paper (hoping to make a big dent in this category), and my craft closet. I’d love to know if you’ve got the spring cleaning bug (purge version or otherwise) like I do and what your plan of attack is if you care to share.
Happy spring cleaning!
* Post contains affiliate links. This is not a sponsored post. All opinions are genuinely my own. *
