In the past few months of 2018, I felt overwhelmed by the numerous options available in the market and started to gravitate towards becoming less materialistic and more minimal. This changed my perspective on physical things and made me more conscious of my spending habits. I also realised that, especially through my travels, that I don’t need a lot of things to survive. In fact, having a concise and well thought out collection of things were making me much happier. Thus, an idea came to me when I flew back from Australia which I am going to embark on in the month of December and in 2019.
Project 10, as I would like to call it, is going to be me choosing just 10 things to keep from each category, be it tops, dresses, bags, pairs of shoes to lipsticks, highlighters and concealers. This may still seem way off from a typical definition of minimalism, but we all have to start somewhere. Of course, the first thing I am going to target would be my makeup collection. Dwindling down my makeup collection is something that has been on my mind for a while now, and I am excited to pick and choose the very selected few items that makes me happy. As someone with quite a hefty makeup collection, I realised that I started to feel lazy about thinking which item to use and thus, I would usually just go without it. I know, how lazy can my lil brain get, but that’s true. In fact, it’s called the paradox of choice, where too many options lead to indecisions which then subsequently leads to inaction.
Thus, I’m going to (and I know that it will not be easy!) slowly eliminate the products in each category such that I’m only left with 10 of each. This is definitely something I would like to accomplish before I turn 27 (as mentioned in my 27 before 27). This is going to be especially difficult for my eyeshadow palettes, lipsticks and concealers! First world problems, eh?
To start, this will be the order of categories that I will be tackling over the next few months (starting from the easiest aka the category of products I use the least) and I thought I would share with you the ones that survived the purge, hopefully it will be something you’d be interested in! Do note that mascaras aren’t included as I generally always have less than 10. And yes, I kinda cheated with some of the categories, I know!But slow and steady, right?
- bronzers (both cream and powder; should be easy since I rarely do wear it)
- foundations (this includes powder foundations, liquid foundations and cushions)
- single eyeshadows and pigments (the hardest ones to clear would probably be my colourpop ones!)
- brow products
- blushes (both liquid and powder but ok, I have to be honest, this is tough so this does not include highlighter palettes)
- highlighters (once again, both liquid and powder but not considering highlighter palettes!)
- eyeshadow palettes
- bold lipsticks (I have to split up my lipsticks into two categories as this is the ultimate challenge as I have over 60. Some are limited edition and it hurts my lil heart to part with it but…)
- natural lipsticks
- concealers (both cream and liquid, oh boy!)
I’ve already started the purge and while it hurts a little, it surprises me how much I’ve changed over the past few months. I looked at the items and swatched them, and I do remember how I felt (oh the ecstasy and sense of satisfaction!) when I purchased them. But that urge to throw them all over my face has diminished.
Stay tuned for the posts featuring the survivors of my lil project 10!
Till then,
