Beauty Challenge: One Hundred Empties.

For someone who is not a professional beauty blogger or a make-up artist, I have a lot of products. I don’t even wear make-up daily, which serves to double the ridiculousness. Dozens of shadows and lipsticks sit unused every day, collecting dust and cat fur and shame, so much shame.

(Had to add drama, sorry.)

So on a slow, quiet, delightful weekday evening I decided to do a full inventory of my stuff and institute a One Hundred Empties challenge upon these lands. It is akin to Project Pan that originated on YouTube back in the day.

There are some empties posts coming up about products I finished before I decided on the challenge, so to preserve the accuracy – as we all deeply care – only the products finished on and after April 1 will count towards the challenge.

I’d like to set a specific date for completion, but a hundred products is, well, a hundred products. I don’t want to slather myself in three layers of body lotion or put on five layers of mascara simply because I want to race to complete this before the end of new year, for example.

Which products count towards challenge? All of them, including samples. Now, I could hypothetically ‘win’ this on samples alone, but I’m not going to do that, because I’m an honest person. (You can laugh now, can’t hear you.) Two samples of the same product are going to count as one item. Other than that, one sample = one item. Soaps will count towards the challenge as well.

Which products won’t count? I’m big on dental hygiene, but I’m not sure I’m going to count toothbrushes, floss, and the likes towards the 100 Empties list. Same goes for nail and foot files and loofahs. Brushes that have seen better days will not count towards the challenge either.

When is an emptie an emptie? Ideally an emptie is an emptie when the product is fully used up and the packaging is discarded. However, there are cases where I just let go of products. Most often this applies to nail polishes, shampoos, and mascaras. If I decide to not use the shadow anymore and only keep it for sentimental value, it’s not going to count. An emptie in this case is a product that no longer takes space in my cabinets. I.e., I used it up, let go of it, or threw it out.

Am I allowed to buy things? Yes, in moderation. I can buy replacements for things I ran out of. I can also stock up on my olde favourites on sale. I’m not cancelling my Lip Monthly subscription. If it’s a colour or a product I’ve been meaning to buy for ages, then I’ll buy it within my budget. My ultimate goal is to follow the ‘two out – one in’ approach, but we’ll see how it goes.

Above you can see my skincare stash. It’s a relatively old picture, so it’s changed a bit since then, but I wouldn’t say it lessened any, especially not the soaps (on the right).