53.2025

Declutter time, part 3!

Since we're finally getting sun and warmth, I decided it was time to pull out the sunscreen.

I'm normally a person who wears sunscreen every day no matter what, but I fell out of the habit the last few months. So I pulled out the container of sunscreen samples and went through them, figuring I would toss anything old and try out new ones during a season when I'm not too bothered by the sun.

Only to discover that out of the many, many samples, only three hadn't expired, and those three were going to expire in the next couple months. Yikes.

These were all GWPs so I'm not too sad to throw them all away (and I didn't bother to count, but there was easily over 20 samples, more like 30). The majority expired in 2023 which tells me how long I've been hanging onto them.

In the end, I ended up tossing the three samples that were expiring the next couple of months because I realized I didn't want to use them, and I wanted to see how far I could comfortably get with the one full-size sunscreen that I paid actual $$$ for, the sunscreen that is my favorite, the one I routinely buy, the one I know my skin doesn't hate. It expired in January.

But because I'm not worried about getting perfect UV protection right now, I'd prefer to use it until I decide I need a fresh sunscreen.

Oh, and I did throw out a full-size sunscreen that expired last year, but I'm not heart-broken because I'll know I'll buy another one this summer. This is also the body sunscreen which I'm less picky about compared to the sunscreen I put on my face.

So once I cleared out the container of expired sunscreen, that gave me space to rearrange the cabinet a bit, and I ended up putting up all my random eye creams in that container, which then gave me more space to rearrange my full-size moisturizers and serums. I then went through the random container of tall things and ended up throwing out a dozen masks and things I'll never use. I didn't bother to note or track them, but all I kept were the pimple patches and the eye masks, the latter of which I pulled out to be visible so I can use them up over the next couple of months.

While digging around I discovered a makeup bag filled with samples of setting spray that I forgot about, so I'm going to try and use some of those up before the summer months hit and I need the really good sprays to keep my makeup from melting off.

And then I organized my everyday makeup container! I just finished an eyeliner (whee!) so was figuring out which one to focus on next, and pulled out the weird random brown eyeliners that I don't know if I'll like. If I don't like them, I won't be sad (especially since I still have the backups of my favorite eyeliners still in the pipeline), and if they're tolerable, then at least they'll get used up!

I'm close to using up another eyebrow pencil – will probably be done by the end of the month, so I can add it to my "used up" list. I still have five weird eyebrow pencils to use up and then I can finally focus on the eighteen (!!!) eyebrow pencils that I love. At least, I thought I loved. I hope I still love. Because I have EIGHTEEN of them!

I knoooooooow. But it was so easy to toss in an eyebrow to meet a shipping threshold and then forget about how many I had until I realized I have more than a year's worth of eyebrow pencils to deal with. Assuming the rate of usage is a pencil a month, counting the misfits I'm working on, in theory I shouldn't have to buy an eyebrow pencil until 2027. Yikes.

And is why I'm on a No Buy.