Purging My Makeup Stash

I have too much makeup. The first step is admitting you have a problem, right? I have reached the point where my makeup stash is overflowing and I couldn't fit anything else in it if I tried. I decided I needed to do a purge of my collection and get rid of the junk that a) does not look good on me, b) I don't like and c) I don't wear, ever. Since I am constantly buying makeup (I just went to the L'Oreal Warehouse sale last weekend and may or may not have just taken part in the Coastal Scents .99¢ hot pot sale [I might have bought 22 single eyeshadows. Don't judge. This post needs to be judge free!]) I needed to take a step back and look at my collection. And bonus: when you throw things out, you make room to buy new stuff!

The first thing I did was pull out all of my makeup drawers and put them on the floor. I have one large tower of three plastic drawers that holds most of my makeup. The top drawer houses my blushes/bronzers/highlighters, as well as concealers and eyeliners. The middle drawer houses most of my eyeshadows: cream shadows, smaller palettes and some of my larger palettes (Naked, Naked 2, Electric and the Revealed palettes). My larger eyeshadow palettes sit in a divider on top of the plastic drawers. The bottom drawer houses miscellaneous lip products. Basically anything that isn't a traditional lipstick: lip stains, liquid lip sticks, lip creams, OCC Lip Tars, etc. I then have a small black drawer set. The top drawer houses my foundations. The middle drawer has all of my lipsticks and the bottom drawer houses my lip glosses and any extra items, like a few sample jars. As you can see, they were all full to the brim.

Drawer by drawer, I dumped them out and began to sort. I sorted by colour mostly. For blushes, I sorted by texture and type (cream blush, powder blush, highlighters and bronzers). Then I went through each pile and swatched everything, looking for dupes or things that I just don't reach for. For each drawer I made three piles: keep, trash and probation. Anything I knew I wouldn't use again, anything that didn't flatter my skintone or anything that I hadn't touched in ages, hit the trash. I won't be throwing these products out entirely. I sifted through them to get rid of anything that had gone bad and those went to the garbage. All of the MAC products I will back-to-MAC, which includes 10 lip glosses, two lipsticks and two eyeshadows. I used to be really into lipgloss but I haven't worn a lipgloss in years. I held on to about 7 glosses that I really loved but parted with the rest. Our likes and dislikes change so much that we need to part with stuff we know we will not use again even if we used to be obsessed with it.

This is the pile of stuff I will be getting rid of. Do you see the dust on that Coastal Scents 88 palette? Yeah, that says a lot about how much I reached for it. This pile includes 15 lipsticks, 31 lipglosses, 5 miscellaneous lip products, 2 foundations, 4 concealers, 24 eyeshadow products (quads, singles, duos, even 3 colour tattoos!), 8 eyeliners and 6 blushes/highlighters/bronzers. My friends and I are actually planning on having a makeup swap party. They are going to go through their makeup as well and we'll bring it all together and see who wants what. I am sure they will love to dig through this pile. At least this stuff can go to a good home where someone can use it. For sanitary/hygiene reasons none of it can be donated because it was pretty heavily used, so hopefully my friends can get some use out of the makeup that I once loved.

And this is my probation pile. This was basically my maybe pile. I couldn't decided if I wanted to keep them or not so I am putting them on probation. Each week I will try to use a couple products and decided whether or not they should stay in my collection. This pile includes 9 lipsticks, 7 miscellaneous lip products, 2 foundations/primers, 4 eyeshadows and 5 blushes. These are things I haven't touched in a while but I had a hard time thinking of parting with them. I am thinking of doing a series on here about it. I will try out the products and see what stays and what gets added to the trash pile.

I thought this would be harder than it was. I am ridiculously attached to my makeup. But it was very easy to look through my collection and realize what I did and did not like or use. It was actually quite cathartic. These are my drawers after the purge. Everything fits so much better and I even have an empty drawer! I now have room to add my concealers with my foundation and all of my eyeshadow can fit into one drawer (excluding the larger palettes). I will also now feel less guilty when I want to buy something new, well at least at IMATS. I am putting myself on a buying ban until then, but that's another post.