Makeup clear out, downsizing project and blog sale

My vanity

I've been meaning to write this post for a while now, but I never felt confident enough to share it with you all.

Since I was 8 or 9, I got my mum's magazines and go straight to beauty and fashion pages and in the years of course I started buying my own copies and cherish the beauty section in each of them.
So clearly I've always been drawn to that "perfect" world and I fell even more deeply in love around the time I started uni, when I met a girl that was interested in beauty like me.
We talked about makeup launches, interesting youtubers, fantastic blogs, nail polish colours so it was at that time that I discovered the giant virtual beauty community.
And through the years I've become more involved with that community, not much as a writer or a contributor, but mostly as an avid reader / watcher.
I've scrolled pages and pages of beauty blogs, seen so many pics and watched so many videos, I've become sort of addicted.
And as a natural and obvious consequence, I started craving for the same products I saw on all those platforms and got on a buying frenzy, which at one point became just a frustrating and draining rush for the latest nail polish or that unmissable item from a limited edition collection.

Yeah, I think I can finally admit that I've been addicted for shopping in the last 4 years or so. Especially beauty shopping.
Now, I'm not trying to defend myself, but I think that, apart from the influence of youtubers, bloggers, magazines, etc, and me not being so mature and critical, there are also some unconscious reasons behind my (mis)behaviour. But that is a whole different story.

Inspiration
I've been feeling quite guilty about this unhealthy habit, therefore I used to (and still do) hide my new purchases from anyone and prefer to do shopping on my own.
So I think it's finally time to change things a little bit, even though I know it's going to be a long, humungous work.
Of course, I didn't wake up one day and had all the determination to do it but I was inspired by a few lovely ladies (a bit of "blog-watching" in here too):

On Youtube: Christine of Pinksofoxy and Tati
Blog posts: ViviannaDoesMakeup's tips on clear out organisation and downsizing
Jennypurr
The everyday beauty
What she does now  
And for some nail polish purging inspiration:
Spaz and Squee 


The clear out
Of course the first thing to do was to go through my entire makeup collection and "analyse" every single product and just be honest with myself: Do I like it? Does it suit me/match me? and most importantly Do I use it?
This wasn't as tough as I thought it would be: other people can get a better use of these products and I definitely feel much much better and less overpowered. I think I will do it twice a year, along with the rest of the spring (and autumn) cleaning.
But what have I done the products that went to the "purge" pile?

- I've tossed finished or expired products (the latter were very few fortunately), apart from MAC stuff that I'm saving MAC for the Back 2 MAC!)
- Gave to my friends the products they liked but I think they're gonna get more! =)
- I've got an internationally open blog sale going on! There are still some things I need to photograph (nail polish!), but there's a lot of makeup, skincare, bodycare items from drugstore to high end brands, if you would take two minutes to visit this page you would make my day! Thank you.
- In the near future I will host some Beauty adoptions (open to Italy only, sorry!)


The great thing is that I had a sort of declutter kick and cleared out the rest of my stuff: nail polishes, cosmetics, clothes, accessories. And now everything is just a lot more organized. Awesome!

The plan

Now, to avoid getting right back to bad habits I have a series of little projects that are all connected to one another:

• Shop my stash: use and enjoy what I have (and get to do my friends' makeup more). This is my main goal.
• Project "n" pan: with the using comes the using up! This autumn and winter I'd like to finish a few lip products that have been going around for a lot now, some liquids (a tinted moisturizer, a concealer, a couple of foundations, etc...) and a couple of mascaras as well.
• Low-buy: this is going to be the hardest one, I know, that's why I'm not doing a no-buy 'cause I would miserably fail.
  But at least I can try to control my shopping frenzy:
  • creating a wishlist for EVERYTHING, from stuff that I actually need to the things I'd like to buy, so that I can control myself and prioritize. 
  • unsubscribing from all the tempting beauty newsletters. Brutal, but necessary. I will still receive the ones from three organic e-tailers, from Pupa and the Sephora promos will be delivered in the mail (still a huge temptation to deal with...)
  • keeping track of my financial resources and things I need to pay for (bills, gasoline, groceries...) on a regular basis and eventually set a budget for shopping extras.

The beauty 
Along with the topic of the (subjective) ideal size and quality of a makeup collection goes the likewise subjective ideal beauty set up.
At the beginning, what I admired of makeup/nail polish collections people were showing on Youtube was the quantity: the larger a collection, the most impressed I was.
Lately, this conception has been totally turned around for me and I'm much more fascinated by a neat, organized and lovely displayed collection on an elegant vanity table.
As a bonus if you read through all of this rambling, here are my favourite makeup tables/vanities of some amazing bloggers:

Le beauty girl's dressing table

Belles Boutique's dressing table

Beauty & Le Chic's makeup storage

Erica Fae's vanity

Amy Antoinette's shabby chic vanity

Bikinis and passports's bathroom organization

How's your collection? Are you happy with it, would you like to be smaller, bigger?

What do you do with the products you don't love anymore?

Any tips?

Hope you didn't fall asleep but that otherwise this was some kind of interesting.

Until next time, take care!

Gra