It’s time for some spring cleaning — in your makeup drawer. That’s right: the time has come to reorganize and reprioritize your beauty and skin care items by organizing your makeup drawer.
Being surrounded by clutter can make your mind feel cluttered, too. There's always an expiration date when it comes to makeup, skin care, and other beauty products. Chances are you have some old relics sitting in your drawers collecting dust.
We have created the ultimate guide to decluttering your beauty collection. We know how to make it easy and fun to get rid of old, unused, and expired items so you can enjoy the products you still love.
Follow this guide to start decluttering!
First, how exactly can you choose between your favorite makeup products? We know the struggle.
We know that getting rid of older makeup can be tough. After all, you’ve likely worn and loved some of these products at least once. However, expired makeup is nothing to mess around with.
Start by reminding yourself that this is a health and safety issue. Beyond getting your makeup organized and enjoying a clean space, your health actually benefits from decluttering your beauty space.
If you find the idea of organizing and rearranging your makeup daunting, start small. You can start with the basics: throwing out old, expired makeup products.
Before committing to keeping any of your favorite products, it’s important to check their expiration dates. Once makeup has expired, it’s likely to grow lots of harmful bacteria and even mold. No one wants that on their face!
The expiration date should be visible on each makeup product on the back or bottom of the packaging. Look for a little jar icon with a number and letter inside of it — for example, “12M”.
This indicates that a certain product is safe to use for up to 12 months after opening it. If you can’t remember when you bought something, it’s best to play it safe and assume it’s expired.
On the mild end of things, your beauty products start to change in color and texture after their expiration dates. This can make your makeup and skin care application much more difficult.
Opened, used cosmetic products that are now expired can harbor plenty of bacteria, mold, and irritating compounds. Some cosmetic ingredients break down over time and transform the product into an unsavory version of itself.
If you use old, expired cosmetics, expect to experience a breakout — or five. Expired cosmetics introduce acne-causing bacteria to your skin, even if you don’t typically struggle with pimples and blackheads.
A more severe consequence of this could be a long-term skin infection or severe irritation. Skin infections can be gnarly and difficult to treat. It’s best to avoid the problem entirely by throwing out expired products.
If you lost the original packaging that your cosmetics came in, use this guide to determine the approximate shelf life of your products.
All of your items likely follow similar expiration timelines:
Keep in mind that this is a rough guide, and you should always be on the safe side. We recommend using the lower end of these timelines if you’re unsure of a product’s expiration date.
Now that you’ve thrown away everything that’s expired, it’s time to section off your products.
We recommend starting with your skin care and body care products. Why? Because these are usually the most frequently-used items in someone’s cosmetics collection. The last thing you want is to keep around old or unwanted hygiene products.
Separate all of your items into the following categories:
Don’t worry about tools, accessories, or other functional items right now. Start small by going through the usable products that you don’t need or want anymore.
You might not want to declutter everything in one day or even one week. That’s totally okay. You can save other categories for later as long as you can commit to completing them eventually.
For example, if it takes you an entire day to go through your skin care and body care products, it’s okay to wait another day or week to tackle your makeup.
If you rush the process, you might end up feeling regretful afterward. It’s easy to just throw everything into one pile or another, whether it’s the “throw-away” pile or the “keep” pile. This defeats the purpose of decluttering.
You want to create an organized, clean, decluttered space to use for your favorite products. The goal isn’t to get rid of everything or even the majority of your items. It’s to make them easier to navigate.
Now you know what you’re keeping and what you’re getting rid of. Awesome job!
Now it’s time to physically organize and declutter your space. This might mean purchasing new organizers and labels to give everything a designated spot.
We recommend breaking the organization down by category as well. Trying to reorganize your entire collection can be overwhelming, and you’re less likely to stick to it if you try to tackle it all at once.
You don’t need anything fancy, just some simple, clear organization bins and containers. This will make everything aesthetically pleasing and allow you to easily grab your everyday favorites.
The answer to this depends on your personality and organizational style. Some people love to see a nice, neat label on everything they own. Others could care less. It’s up to you.
Labeled bins and containers are all the rage right now on social media. Maybe your inspiration to declutter in the first place came from a TikTok or Instagram post. If that’s the case, you may benefit from making your space a little more aesthetic than others.
If labels and stickers will slow you down, it’s not worth the hassle. Just make sure you know where everything is so you can easily reach for the items you need when you need them. Nothing is more frustrating than getting lost in your own beauty collection after you’ve reorganized!
People with larger beauty and hygiene spaces may want to add special shelves, containers, and bins to their countertops and vanity surfaces. That’s a great idea, but it can be a hassle if you’re working with a smaller surface area.
Drawer storage is another good option for both skin care and makeup items. If you’re short on space and need to organize your items in a stress-free way, you can get special racks and separators for your drawers.
Wall shelves might fit your personal style more than the other options. If you have floating shelves or other wall organizers, take advantage of them whenever possible to free up the rest of your space.
By the time your beauty space is organized and tidy, you might think your work is done. The truth is that many large skin care and cosmetic companies have unethical and cruel practices. If there was ever a time to re-evaluate your consumption habits, it’s now.
Whish Beauty is the gold standard of clean, ethical, safe beauty and skin care products. Our customers trust our products for a good reason. We take every step possible to make our ingredients clean, environmentally friendly, and animal friendly.
All of our products are free of the following:
If you want to improve your mark on the world, Whish Beauty is the way to go.
Besides clean, skin-safe ingredients, it’s important to look at a company’s ethics and environmental practices.
Because we use natural ingredients in our products at Whish Beauty, we are minimizing our environmental footprint. This is a good thing for people, animals, and the planet.
When your cosmetics collection feels good in your heart, it looks good on you, too. Choose ethical products that give back to the world instead of taking away from it.
When you go to buy more beauty products in the future, add some Whish Beauty favorites to your new collection!