Twice a year, we go through our closets and our garages and it feels good! We don’t do this often enough for personal items that touch our skin, but we really should. This video gives you simple tips to a cleaner makeup drawer, so you can declutter without the overwhelm!
A cleaner makeup drawer in 5 easy steps
Hi there! I’m Maria, a makeup artist and green beauty expert living in Toronto. Welcome to my site! This This topic is close to my heart because as a beauty expert, I understand how quickly products can accumulate. This blog is all about how to get a cleaner makeup drawer in 5 easy steps. I’m going to cover five areas, from how to read your expiration labels to how to clean your beauty containers, and wash your brushes. These steps are important for decluttering every six months and for keeping your skin safe from expired products.
1) How long do products last?
Let’s start off with those little symbols on your packaging because they’re important to the freshness of your product. From here, you will decide if you need to keep your product or replace it. The symbol of the little with the open lid shows you how many months your product will last after opening. In the example in the image above, the number in the jar is 12. This product is good for a year after opening. If the number is 6, then it’s good for six months after opening. You can find this symbol on the bottles of your product or perhaps it was on the box if your product came with one. If you have thrown the box away and your jar or bottle doesn’t have this symbol, I will tell you below how to tell if your product is still good to use. There are also some industry rules around expirations of products, so let’s look at these below.
Mascara expiration dates
This is product most of us use daily, so I’m placing it at the top of the list. You’re going to open the tube, apply mascara with the wand to your lashes, and put the wand back in the tube. You will repeat this every day and after 4-5 months, I want you to grab a fresh tube. You need to mark the opening date somewhere. Perhaps you keep the box and write it on there. Perhaps you will find another system. Mascara is one of those products that you need to use fresh as you’re applying it on your eye lashes and some will definitely get in your eyes. On my site, the Pure Anada Natural Mascara is on subscription, so you can choose when to have a fresh tube send to you. The industry standard for a conventional mascara is 6 months. A natural mascara should not be kept as long.
Soft Powders expiration dates
Dry powder makeup has a longer lasting shelf life than liquid products. For example, some of my loose powders and eye shadows I’ve had longer than a year, so full disclosure! They look exactly the same as when I first bought them. In general, there is a “open jar” symbol that might say anywhere from 12 – 24 months. Do your due diligence, just like you do with your yogurt or milk in the fridge and actually look and smell the product. Since there’s no water in your powders, bacteria will not grow as quickly, but this of course depends on how you use them. Do you dip a wet makeup brush in there? Is it a pressed powder you use daily? Do you dip in there with a clean makeup brush? Examine your product when you first open it and keep your eye on it past the expiration date.
Liquid product expiration dates
For makeup foundations, the expiration date is anywhere from 6-12 months. The natural products I carry say 6 months but a conventional drug store foundation can say up to 12 months. Pay attention to your individual product and keep in mind how long it lasts.
Then we have skincare products. You can often find dates underneath the bottle or jar. These can indicate a batch number, so pay attention to these in case your product starts looking funny in a shorter time than what the label indicates. You can definitely contact the company and tell them which batch you had and get them to look into it and see if they had any issues with the batch. It’s happened to me before and this is how I was able to trace which product it was and which batch it belonged to. If you had this happen, you might want to think about where you store your product. Is it in direct light or in a humid bathroom? These factors can all affect the life of your skincare.
2) What does it look and smell like?
Now that we’ve covered the expiration dates, I want to move onto your senses. You should get into the habit of smelling your products right after you first open them. Get familiar with that fresh smell and look of your products. It’s the only good way to tell that the product has gone bad in the future. You need to know what it smells like new so you have something to compare it to when you smell it a year later. As I mentioned above, a product can go bad before its expiration date for a variety of reasons. You also need to know what your product looks like in terms of colour and texture. A facial oil that was bright yellow when new but has now faded of its colour is best kept off your skin. Knowing the smell and look of your products is going to save you from applying a bad product onto your skin.
3) How to clean your products
Pressed powders and shadow compacts
As I said before, can last quite a while. Um, use powders of course, more than the pressed powders. Now, the reason for that is that if you have a loose powder, You have the product on the top, like, so, and then you pick it up with your brush or a powder puff.
And when you have a pressed product, you are more likely to go in with a path or a brush. We’ll get to brushes later. But if you are not taking care of your brushes and washing them, Uh, as often as you should, you’re going to be taking the oil from your face and you’re going to be pressing it back into your product.
So what you might find is that your powders, your press powders on top developed kind of like a cakey film right now. That’s just, uh, the oil from your face. Or your brush. So what you want to do is you want to take a spatula and you can actually scrape the top layer of your powder and get rid of that cheekiness, and then try to be more diligent with how often you wash your brushes for mascara.
Same thing. When you get a fresh mascara, open it up. And smell it. Okay. Familiarize yourself with what it smells like, look at the brush, you know, so we know from that previous packaging that this miscarriage should last about four months, but, um, after you’ve thrown that box out, you’re not, you might not remember.
All right. So again, you need to smell it and try to keep tabs on when you bought it, when you first opened it and periodically smell it to make sure that it smells the same way. Now for your oils. So any oils or skincare product that you have in your bathroom, you’re going to open it when it’s fresh and you’re going to, you’re going to smell it.
When using your products, keep them clean and fresh longer by using a spatula to dip into jars and handling everything with clean hands. The more diligent you are with how you handle your products, the longer they will last.
The best way to clean your pencil
Of course, you should also know what it looks like. Um, you know, what it smells like. So these are actually good up to 18 months, but the best way to sanitize and clean your pencils. Is to sharpen them. All right. Once you sharpen a pencil, you get a fresh color tip. You get a fresh, you know, a wood part around here.
So that really cleans up and sanitizes your pencils. And you will also find that for a lot of makeup products, they’re just not going to apply the same way. So we talked about smelling it and looking at it, but also the texture is a big thing to pay attention to. Right? So, especially with anything like body lotions, does the texture of the product feel the same?
3) How to wipe down your containers
Now wiping down your containers is quite simple. You’re going to take a cloth soft cloth, and you’re going to warm it up with some water, maybe a little bit of. So, and you’re going to go in and start wiping down all the bottles in your makeup cabinet or your tubes.
You know, sometimes we do have dirty hands. We touch oils, we touch all these different things and the bottles on the outside, get all that gunk. So you’re going to go in and wipe everything. You’re going to take your compacts and you’re going to wipe it on the outside. If you’re able to pop your product out of the compact.
Such as in these types of compacts here, you know, pop out the color or pop out the product, use something to peel it off and then try to wipe the edges of the product and then just pop your product back in one of my favorite things is the brushes. You really have to. Take care of your brushes and you have to wash your brushes.
Brushes go until recent years. We’re not super cheap now because we make them synthetic, vegan materials, and we can use cheaper materials such as bamboo for their handles. They have dropped in price. However, they can also help keep your product fresh. Because again, as I mentioned earlier, they are transferring the oils from your face into your products.
So you’re dipping in, you see this motion that I’m doing. Okay. So, um, the easiest way to do it, I want you to do it in this way because I think it will really save you time is to take your brushes. Okay, and get a little Mason jar, fill it up with a little bit of water. Now I’ve seen this done on videos and people fill it up all the way to the top.
The reason why you don’t want to do that due to the brush being comprised of three parts. Okay. So this is the handle. And a lot of times it’s made out of wood, whether it’s bamboo or, you know, um, and then this is the fair rule. And this is the loop. So what happens here, these two parts are actually joined or fused together with some kind of adhesive, right?
4) How to clean your brushes properly
What you don’t want is your handles to start separating from these metal part. So the reason why you need to have a little bit of water is so that your brush doesn’t get dipped in all the way to the wood. All right. So to the handle, so you can swirl like this. That’s great. Um, so this is just a little bit of water with a couple of drops of Castiel soap.
You can also use a little bit of shampoo if you’re using, um, a good shampoo, especially if you have natural bristle brushes. I do have some because they’ve been with me for over 20 years in school, but you’re just going to dip your brushes in and you’re just going to swirl them around gently. Again, we’re not getting the wooden handle wet.
And then, of course, you’re going to see that the water is changing here. Mine is getting a bit of a pink tinge from my blush brush, or as you’re going to swirl it like this. And then what do you do when you’re done with that? You’re going to have to raise them because there is soap in there. So are you gonna take your gonna take your brush out and gently rinse them.
You can do it in the Palm of your hand or dump out the soapy water, fill it up with a bit, a little bit of clean water and swirl them around to rinse them after you’ve done that. You’re gonna squeeze the excess water out of your brush and you’re gonna shake them. Into shape and then you’re going to place them somewhere to air-dry.
Right. You can put them the other way up on the, uh, in the Mason jar or what I like to do in the bathroom. I have a vent where the heat comes up. I placed them over that grill part of the vent, and then they are dry, super quickly. I would recommend washing your brushes at least once a week, if not, once every two weeks would be great.
And get to remember that all that stuff from your face is going into your product. So if you don’t want your product to get gunky and Katy and covered in oil, you’re going to have to be more diligent with washing your brushes.
5) The product that needs to go – because it is expired, hard to get or your forgot about
Lastly, now that you have cleaned some stuff out, you might have on hand a bunch of stuff that has expired or a bunch of stuff that has the product on the bottom of the jar that, you know, you’re never going to use or that you forgot about.
Now you’re going in and smelling it and he just doesn’t smell the same. So what are you going to do with all these containers? Okay. Um, I’m hoping you don’t have too much to get rid of, and that you’ve been paying attention to what you’ve been using. However, you might be left with things like this, you know, maybe your powder broke or, you know, you are right at the end. So these would be my suggestions to how-to get rid of some expired, older things from your makeup drawer, just so you can declutter and actually really focus on what you have. This will be also very easy to do. Now you have a more clear understanding of what you need to replace.
What is missing, did something expire that now you need to replace as slow as soon as all that stuff is out of there? All of that becomes more clear for you. So what I would recommend with any product that you have a tiny bit left on the bottom of the jar, you’re going to scoop that out into the garbage, and you’re going to take a paper towel, or are you going to take some other kind of.
Material. And you’re just going to scoop that out. Okay. Now why the garbage well, because depends on depending on what you’re using, you don’t want to have all that, um, you know, more toxic ingredient find its way into our waterways. Okay. So if you are using all-natural stuff, I think, you know, just do your due diligence and check your ingredients.
And then of course you can reinstate and put it down the drain. If you’re using natural stuff, otherwise I would probably just scoop it out and throw it in the trash. You’re also not wasting as much water. Having your faucet running, trying to wash everything out. Now, if you are using products with a glass jar, these can definitely be repurposed.
Some Products are Refillable
There should be a variety of refill stations around your city, so do some research. Find one closest to you and check them out to see what refill options they offer. You can remove the labels from your empty containers and wash them with warm soapy water to clean them out. You can also place them in your dishwasher to sanitize them, but be careful not to melt them. I have destroyed several lids and soft plastic containers even on the top rack of my dishwasher. Glass containers are the best for the dishwasher but not their lids. If you’re not going to be refilling your cosmetic jars, they still need to be cleaned if you’re going to be recycling them.
Recycling your Cosmetic Containers
After you’ve cleaned out your jars and pumps, you need to ensure they go to the right place. I would recommend consulting the Waste Wizard for your city, or municipality. This is a service that the City of Toronto has online, so your city might as well.
The waste wizard is very helpful when it comes to disposing cosmetic containers because there is such a variety of packaging materials! If you type “mascara” into the Waste Wizard, it will tell you that it’s a hazard hazardous household item. It needs to be disposed of where your batteries go. Really. There is no way to empty out a mascara tube. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a natural or conventional mascara, the whole thing shouldn’t go in the trash. Many people do exactly that, so many organizations have started collecting used mascara wands and using them for wildlife rescue. If you have a TerraCycle box at a store near you, you can dispose of any beauty containers your city will not collect there. Collect them in a box and then dispose of them in one batch next time you’re near a TerraCycle box. Find a TerraCycle box near you!
Replace the products you need
You can now start fresh and get some new products to replace the old ones. My advice for you when going to shop is to make a shopping list for yourself because it’s really easy to get distracted when you enter a store. So what do you need? What do you need to have replaced? What do you want to switch over to? If you’re looking to make some cleaner choices check out my clean, Canadian beauty store for both skincare and makeup options. I have vetted all the products I carry myself based on company ethics, ingredients and performance.
Review of your Cleaner Makeup Drawer
You’re going to see a big difference when you go back and look at your makeup drawer. A lot of stuff can accumulate in there quickly. You will now realize that you might only use four or five trusted products on a daily basis. It’s a good habit to go into your makeup drawer once every six months, assess what you have and repeat this process. What are you using or not using? What has expired and what needs to be replaced? Good luck cleaning out everything. Remember, less is more!
If you want to contact me with any questions I can be reached at maria@greenbeautyexpert.ca or you can leave your comment below.
Thank you for reading, everyone!