KonMari-ing My Skincare Collection
One of the best decisions I ever had was starting this space. I’ve always had a passion for trying new beauty products and I spent hours and hours poring over YouTube videos and beauty blogs. Fast forward a few years, I’m still a beauty junkie and creating content as a side hustle to my day-to-day full time job as a paralegal. Creating this space has opened an insane number of doors and has allowed me to work with brands beyond my dreams.
People tell me all the time “how lucky I am” to receive so many products. Yes and no. I never really like to say things like this out loud because I never want to sound ungrateful, but in all honesty it gets overwhelming. When I lived at home, I was hiding my “secret blogging life” from my parents and I was stashing all my products in my room lol. It got really crazy and I started dedicating an entire drawer of my dresser to products I had to test. I started putting products to photograph in little bins and tried to determine some sort of system. When I moved out, I was fortunate enough to have an enormous cabinet in my bathroom that housed all my beauty products. It was then and there that I decided to be better about sorting my products by category. As much as I love seeing all my products out on display, I needed some sort of organization to keep all the products in order. Plus, not having everything out on the shelves avoids some dust.
I have various bits of storage (see all about my beauty storage here) and sort everything by category. Some are in Muji bins, some are in large boxes, and some are in acrylic drawers. I sort my products by the following categories:
toners/facial mists/essences
serums/oils
moisturizers/sunscreen (in tubes/with pumps) standing up in a bin
moisturizers/face masks in jars in a giant acrylic drawer
face masks in tubes in a small acrylic drawer
hand creams in a small acrylic drawer
sheet masks/eye gels standing upright in a large box - makes it easy to flip through them like a file system!
My friends and family know about my giant “take-home” bin - it’s often full of products that:
Things that haven’t worked for me.
Things I have no interest use in using.
Things I already have and are duplicates or triplicates.
In general I turn down a lot of PR as I don’t have the capacity to test everything. Over the last year, I turned down a large amount of PR as I wasn’t open to testing much with my wedding. There was absolutely no time for any skin mishaps or allergic reactions 🙃. A lot of products I receive in duplicate are also thrown into a separate pile that I keep for giveaways for my followers or thrown into the friends/family bin as mentioned above! (I know I’ve neglected this space a bit over the last few years but giveaways just tend to be easier to host over on IG!) I have a separate bin where I throw new PR mail I receive in to be sorted. (Often times I’ve previously been added to a PR list and don’t get asked if I want that specific mailer.) I look through each product, look up ingredients (to make sure I can use it), and either sort it away into it’s designated category or place it in the friends/family bin or the future giveaway bin.
In order to make sure that I’m staying up-to-date on my stash, I make it a habit to regularly look through all of my product stashes to:
Remind myself of what I have - I often place things in with the intent of using it and sometimes I need to remind myself to use them or be honest with myself and let someone else try the product if I can’t get to it.
Check for product expirations to see what needs to be bumped up the “test” list.
If I still have no interest in using a product, into a giveaway or friends/family pile it goes.
In general I will not finish a product unless I absolutely love it. Take that to heart whenever I post about empties as that truly meant I was committed to the product and keen on using it until the end. When I test out new products, if they don’t “wow” me within a few uses, they usually go in the friends/family bin ASAP. I’ve used enough products as well that I can tell if something is a hit/miss for me within 1-2 uses.
For those that are fellow beauty and skincare enthusiasts, how do you usually go about keeping your stash in check?