Hello everyone! Welcome to BirthMay 2020 AND Self Care Sunday! Today I want to focus on decluttering beauty items.

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In general, Self Care Sundays this BirthMay will have a decluttering theme. With small declutters I’ve done throughout the past year or so, I’ve noticed that it really helped clear up my mind and so I thought it was a great form of self care to share with you. I did find a lot of inspiration through books, blog posts, friends, and other sources, but here’s what I did as I was decluttering and what worked for me.

In case you’re new, BirthMay is my annual birthday celebration where I blog every day for the month of May. This is the fourth annual BirthMay and no matter how many BirthMays you’ve been here for, thank you for your support!

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Beauty Declutter

Now, I had (and still have) a lot of beauty items. Make up, skin care, hair items, etc. I used to get various subscription boxes, with a lot of them focusing either partly or completely in beauty. I have bins of make up samples, skin care products, and so on around my house so I figured it was time to go through it and really declutter this area.

Step 1: Throw out anything expired

First thing I did was determine if a product was expired. This is a great way to right away throw out an item without worrying about it. If it’s expired, then it has to go! Simple. For the most part, open times have an expiration timeline on the bottle, but if it doesn’t then smelling or swatching the product can be a a great way to check. If it smells, looks, or feels weird, it’s probably expired and you can toss it out right then and there. I got rid of a few nail polishes that both looked weird and I knew I wouldn’t wear, some last bits of foundation, and other samples that I tried and didn’t use up because I didn’t enjoy. Super quick and easy to get a huge chunk of items out.

Step 2: Identify if there’s any duplicates in the remaining items

Next, I looked over each category to determine if there was another reason to get rid of anything. Mostly looking to see if I had duplicates of anything, something I knew I wasn’t going to wear, or anything like that. If there were duplicates, either exactly the same or similar colors/functions, I would try to keep the open and used one and throw the new one into a bin to gift away. If it was something that was running out, I would leave the duplicate but make sure to use up the other item ASAP so I could only have one instead of two of the same thing, if I actually liked the item. Of course, if it’s open and used, I can’t really gift that so I decided to just suffer through it and try to use up the item quickly so I could move onto something that I did like and have less stuff overall.

Step 3: Be honest if you’ll use the rest

For any new items that I hadn’t opened yet, I had to really think about how likely I was to actually use the product. I haven’t bought anything new in awhile, so that means anything still in the package has been sitting there for some time. If I was trying to use up other items but still really interested in trying out that item, I was fine keeping it. But if I wasn’t that interested and only keeping it just to have it, then I made the decision to throw it into the gifts bin so someone else could enjoy it. With this I got rid of a few serums, eye liners, and even perfumes so I could gift those later on to some of my cousins or maybe my mom or sister. I even was able to get rid of a pack of hair ties that I’d bought but ended up not using because they weren’t heavy duty enough for my hair! Sure, they’d do in a pinch if I used two ties at once, but I’d since bought better ties that actually worked so these others weren’t being used and taking up space.

Honestly, the most helpful thing in this category for items that I was debating was being honest with myself and asking myself if I actually wanted to try out that item or just keeping it just to have options. Often times, I just wanted to have the option which wasn’t a good enough reason to keep it for myself to use “someday”. I’d much rather have someone who could enjoy it try it out and keep it for themselves than to hoard it away in my stash, so off it goes to a new home!

Where can it all go?

I’ve already talked about how I prefer to gift new items to my family members when possible, and anything used I throw out. But there are other places where things can go! For instance, friends or work colleagues might also appreciate some new items if there aren’t family members that would want them. Also, I know many woman’s shelters or nonprofits specifically geared towards women love to get these donations so that women in need can have stuff for self care or make up for interviews and such. You’ll need to do research into shelters near you (specifically for women or standard ones) and also check their requirements (new only vs. used but sanitized or can be sanitized). Be sure to research this all before you go donate stuff. And because this is written while Illinois still has a stay-at-home order, make sure to check ahead if they are accepting stuff right now or if you should wait. I believe some places do have donation bins available so you can drop stuff off with no contact (you can leave a note if you want with the donations), but some might not be taking stuff at all or have other preferences so just check first.

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What are your tips for decluttering beauty items? Let me know because I still have a lot of items and will likely do another check soon!

Thanks for reading!

Pamela

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