No More, Beauty Product Overload

Planning on going to a couple of Superbowl parties but long story short I had to take care of my sick dog. Vet said to give her medicine, special food and lots of rest for the weekend. I only caught a few of the commercials during the game and the ones I saw I thought were really good like the tire ad with Mr. and Ms. Potato Head.

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I did find time over the weekend to clean out my beauty products. Why as women do we hold on to products that don't work? They just sit in the bathroom taking up space. I'm planning on cutting back on buying so many products. Not for economical reasons but for simplification. I'm just trying to stick with products that actually work for me which hopefully will cut down on time trying to find the products I need.

The beauty industry is a billion dollar business with "new and improved" products hitting the market as I type. As a society we are looking for the latest and greatest thing making us less satisfied with what we have. Sad to say even as a marketer, I fall for the glossy ads and commercials promising perfect hair, pore minimizing serums, blah blah blah (hey, I'm human). We all want to look our best. It's been studied several times, the correlation between beauty and psychology and those marketing beauty products understand this very well. Notice how you feel when you have a good hair day vs a bad one. If you notice some ads show that, if you've ever noticed a Herbal Essences, Aussie or Pantene commercial it shows how dreary the lady is before using said product and how full of life she seems afterwards. These types of marketing and promotion are aimed at showing you that by using this product you will be transformed into a "new, more exciting" you. For example, you see a mascara ad touting fuller sexier lashes so you buy it but your eyes look exactly the same, resulting in you stuffing it in the back of your bathroom cabinet and the beauty cycle continues with the next product until you find the "right" one for you.

Most us have enough products that we could double as a small store, with scrubs, cleansers, exfoliants, teeth whiteners, lip sticks, lip glosses, bronzers, lotions, potions, etc lining the bathroom cabinets. But if you're in beauty simplification mode as me don't just toss out your unused or "didn't work for me" products donate them. Some organizations that could use the extra products are women shelters for battered and abused and non-profits organizations such as Dress for Success. Don't donate products such as mascara, eyeliner, lipstick or gloss -- these type of products have a high risk of transferring germs. It's best to just toss those instead.