Monday 28 January 2019

Red lipstick declutter


It's no secret that my lipstick collection is out of control. I have way more lipsticks that I can use in this lifetime. For a while now I've wanted to declutter them, however it's such a daunting task that I sit down to start then get overwhelmed and just play with all my pretties.

I think I may have found a method that works for me. I'm doing mini declutters. I'll pick up two lipsticks that are a similar shade, wear them both for a day, then declutter the one that I don't love. If I don't love them both, then they both go.

Since this method is working so well I applied it to my entire red lipstick collection. Today I'm sharing the results with you.

I started by comparing my two favourite red lipsticks, Nars Velvet Matte in Dragon Girl and Rimmel Stay Matte in Fire Starter.

They are very similar and I love them both, however Dragon Girl is over eight years old and doesn't have the staying power that Fire Starter does. Dragon Girl went in the bin and Fire Starter stayed.

When I wear red lipstick I want it to be low maintenance. I want to put it on in the morning then not have to worry about it for the rest of the day.
 
After that it got much easier. 

I pulled out all my red lipsticks and put them into a pile.

Here's what I started with:
 33 red lipsticks, glosses and lip balms.

I put aside the ones that I knew I wanted to keep and put the rest in a pile to test.  


Products I knew I wanted to keep

I tried on all the ones in the not sure pile. If I loved them, they went in to the keep pile. If I wasn't sure, I sent a photo to Emma and would either keep or toss based on her advice.

Products to test

After that, I was left with this pile of lipsticks that I liked:



And this was the toss pile:



Next step was wearing each lipstick for a day to see how it wore.  

Once I'd done that, I pulled out all the similar colours, tested them again and chose which ones I preferred.


Similar shades

I wasn't sure if I wanted to keep the cream lipsticks, mainly because of the wear factor, but decided I'd keep some because I prefer cream lipsticks and they are good to wear over the top of matte lipstick as a touch up during the day.



After all that, here's what I ended up with:


The 11 winners
 Here's what I got rid of:

21 losers


There were a few products I got rid of that surprised me.
I really love Lipstick Queen Medievil and was going to keep it, but I realised that it's ancient. By ancient, I mean it's over eight years old. Gross.  
It's a real favourite, but very similar to Benefit Benebalm and there's no point having both. Mecca now sell a small size Medievil so I might buy that once I've used up my Benebalm.

I really wanted to keep the Hourglass No.28 lip oil because it was a limited edition and no longer available, but when I was honest with myself I accepted that I just don't like it. I like the oil, but it's very runny. Whilst that would be fine if it was clear, having the red tint means it moves all over my face and I look like a toddler who's put on their mums lipstick. I'll pick up the clear version one day.

None of the products I got rid of are bad, I like them all, but I either don't love them or the colour doesn't work for me or I prefer another product more. 

I still think 11 is too many however I intend to pan some of them this year. Ideally I'd like to have five red lip products. A lipstick, lip balm, lip oil, lip gloss and crayon. That's enough.


If you're wondering why the maths doesn't add up, I realised that one of the lipsticks was maroon not red, so I removed it from the pile. 

What's your favourite red lipstick?
Have you done a lipstick declutter?

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