How I Organise My Makeup

how-to-sort-tidy-your-beauty-collection

Happy Sunday everyone, I hope you’re all having a lovely day! As some of you may know, I’m moving house tomorrow and I’ve been having a little tidy and reorganisation of my flat over the past week or so to make packing a little bit easier. I really hate packing so every little helps! Aside from my wardrobe, I’ve been going through my beauty stash and having a good ol’ clear out via donating to friends and family plus I’ll be listing a whole bunch of high end stuff on Depop soon too. As I’ve been organising, I thought I’d write a post on my top tips and tricks for clearing out your makeup.

Step One: Take Everything Out | The easiest way to see how extensive your makeup collection is is by getting it all out. I keep my makeup in one drawer (nail polishes in another and skincare in another) so I take out each box and put it all on my bed in sections. I go through each pile – so blushes, lipsticks, palettes etc – and set it all out so I can see every part. It helps to raid your handbags too, as you’re guaranteed to find at least ten lipsticks and maybe a forgotten powder in there.

Step Two: Be Ruthless | Once it’s all on display and I can be sick at the sight of it all see it all, I work through each section, swatching as I go. I have a rule when it comes to eyeliners and mascaras, if you can’t remember when you opened it (or actually remember doing so and it was years ago, this stands for all makeup) then it has to go. They’re the worst for bacteria and you don’t want a nasty eye infection! I always end up with crazy arms in this process as I literally test everything out, every blush, every lipstick. If things are just ok or I’m not keen on the colour or I don’t really love them, they go to one side. I try to cut down on duplicate palettes too, as I, at one point, had about five palettes with exactly the same shades in them (gotta love a taupe!) so I was sensible and just kept the best ones!

Step Three: Sort Into Piles | Once you’ve got your keep pile and your get rid pile, you can sort through it all. In my ‘get rid’ pile, I tend to break it down into three: bin, donate, sell. The bin is for old or broken products, the donate is items that are new or lightly used for friends and family and the sell is typically for Depop or a blog sale. I know some people are against selling makeup, but if you’ve spent £30 on a foundation and used it once then why not sell it? It’s a waste of cash just sitting there doing nothing.

Step Four: Organise Your Space | Once you’ve sorted your piles, you can now organise the makeup you’re keeping. I use old beauty boxes as storage for the majority of my products, but like to keep my lipsticks in some Muji drawers and a little lipstick holder from eBay. I organise each box by type of product and, if you’re short on space, you can stack them too if you want (if your products aren’t too big). It makes it so much easier to get at everything when it’s organised!

Step Five: Use Your Products! | Once you’ve decided what you’re keeping and organised your stash, actually use your makeup! I try to switch up my makeup bag once a week with entirely new products (in the literal sense if I have new samples to test and in the ‘shopping my stash’ sense) just so I can actually use the products I said I wanted to keep!

I try to have a sort through my collection about once a month – including skincare and haircare –  just to keep on top of everything! Hope these tips helped if you’re planing a bit of a clear out soon.

how-to-sort-tidy-your-beauty-collection

Helen x
ps. Check out these blogging babes: My Debeauvoir Diaries, the Anonymous Beauty Blogger and Cherry Pie!

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