365 Days | 365 Items Challenge
First I need to apologize.
I missed last week. I had every intention of writing a post on Saturday, but after traveling to St. Louis to see Maroon 5 (and being this close – we were a few rows behind that, but I’m pretty sure I made eye contact with Adam) and then turning around and traveling to Chicago for a Kenmore event (and winning a new fridge) – it just didn’t happen.
I’m sorry. Please forgive me.
With that out of the way, I’m tackling my bathrooms this month.
This is SCARY for me. Truth be told, all of my beauty products live in my bathrooms. And I love beauty products. I love the moment when you try something for the first time and decide if you like it, hate it, or can never live with out it.
They are like hope in 4 ounce or less bottle. Sigh.
But I am committed, so I started in my spare bathroom.
Here is a picture of everything in the spare bathroom vanity (outside of a couple of rolls of bathroom tissue).
WTH?
Think I like painting my fingernails, much?
I wish you could have seen the dust on some of the items. I bet they hadn’t seen the light of day in over three years.
I plopped down on the tile and started going through everything….my mission was to get rid of 1/3 of the stuff.
No More At Home Pedicures
Evidently, in another life, I believed I should do my own pedicures at home. Hence all of the awesome “smooth your nasty feet” scrubs, lotions, and sprays. I haven’t done my own pedicure at home in over seven years. I didn’t even open the bottles to see if they were “good” anymore. Some things are better left to imagination and just thrown in the trash.
The Mary Kay set was a gift from someone. It’s never been opened. I put it in my pile of stuff that goes to Safehouse. Hopefully, it will get good use there.
When I Wanted To Be Jennifer Aniston
Well, I still want to be her or just her body, but that is NEVER going to happen. So I attempted to have her hair and use velcro rollers. (Remember that hair trend??)
And the Sally Hansen Insta-Gel Nail Kit with the ONE LED light…don’t buy that. It doesn’t work very well. Upgrade and purchase this UV Light and Polish from Amazon.
The rest is a hodge-podge of MORE ways to sculpt, buff and polish my toe and fingernails.
But wait….here is where it gets crazy!
Or I Could Just Paint the Walls
I had one basket, albeit a BIG basket, that stored all of my polishes. My philosophy has been when the basket was full, it was time to get rid of a few polishes. Here is how many polishes I had when I dumped over the basket.
I think there were 70 polishes in that basket. In three colors (and varying shades)…sheer pink, red, and dark purple. Some had price tags from Trade Secrets which isn’t even in business anymore! Evidently, instead of going to therapy, I just bought another shade of red polish.
So I took each polish and asked myself, “Ugly color for toenail polish?” and “Is this more than three years old?” and “Is this same color only a slightly different shade?”
If I answered “Yes”….it went into the trash pile.
So these 30 polishes (in the shades of tan/pink, deep purple, red, and sheer pink) went to be recycled. (I let them dry out, and then thrown them in the trash. More eco-friendly.)
So, all told I got rid of 41 items from the spare bathroom vanity. And here is what I learned.
- When I’m upset, another shade of red fingernail polish will not fix it. I still have several shades of red, deep purple, and sheer pink polish. I don’t need any more. Not for the next five years, anyway.
- I REALLY like pretty, painted toe nails and finger nails. There. I said it. I’m vain when it comes to my finger and toe nails. If I invested this much into the products, it means I really like it. I need to schedule time for this area of “grooming”, because I know I will be happier when I do.
- If a product is bad, using it another three or four times isn’t going to make it better. I kept wanting to love the Sally Hansen Insta-Gel Nails. I tried three times. It still sucked. I would have been better to throw it away after the second time (because operator error does occur), then waste more time on it.
So how did you do? What things did you let go this week? What are you doing with all of your unwanted items?
The 365 Day Challenge is getting rid of one item per day over the next year to declutter your house and your life. You can see all past posts on the 365 Days | 365 Items Challenge.
Image credit: ronstik / 123RF Stock Photo
