Ever since I became interested in makeup seven or eight years ago, I have always had more makeup than the average woman. I have gotten several friends into makeup, and I have always enjoyed being a soundboard when they've had a question about a product because they know that even if I haven't tried it, I've probably at least heard of it.
But things became a problem for me in the last few years living in NYC and especially when I started graduate school. NYC is not for the faint of heart, and it's sometimes not even for the strongest among us. This city has battered me around more than anything I've ever experienced, but I am still here because of people and obligations in my life. But when things have felt particularly rough, I would turn to makeup. Every day felt like a fight, and on the days I lost, I would buy makeup. I talked with my dad about this, and he told me that the most important thing was to get through the day. And he said if I needed to buy something to get through, then I needed to do it. Because I needed to get through.
And I did.
And a few months after graduating from my program, I started writing this blog. The blog was supposed to be a way to keep me accountable and to really talk out my frustrations with the beauty community and how consumerism had run rampant. What I wasn't expecting was to learn a lot about myself, my preferences, and the products I enjoy. And that might sound a little foolish, but I honestly thought I knew myself and what kind of makeup I enjoyed before staring this blog and really trying to get to know my makeup. As I have mentioned a lot recently, the most striking and important things I've learned are that I do not enjoy palettes, I much prefer singles, and most shadows are just not that unique.
And with that realization, for me, comes decluttering and downsizing.
Recently, I got into a decluttering mood, and I wanted to share what has left my collection.
Milani Bare Necessities: Decluttered
I considered keeping this for a few hours after I wrote about it in a "This Week's Looks" post, but then I realized I had no reason to keep it, so it has been decluttered. I actually took the matte dark brown shade and repressed that into the Milani Earthly Elements palette, but I don't have plans on using that on the eye (and seeing if it was successful) until indie month is over.
Milani Plum Basics: Decluttered
The pink glitter shadow on the top right was enough to make me want to declutter this palette without another thought. Like the Bare Necessities palette, I repressed the matte white/cream shade into the Milani Earthly Elements palette, and I am excited to see how that turns out.
Becca Ombre Rouge: Decluttered
This was not an easy declutter for me as I really enjoy this palette. The problem is, in the last year, I have maybe used this palette three times. I call it my "professional" or "interview" palette, and indeed, I used this palette for my job interviews and when I had a really important meeting at work in the first couple months I worked there. Now, I am much more comfortable at work and don't need to wear such a conservative look anymore. I think this is a really lovely palette filled with beautiful shades, but the majority of it was just redundant to my collection. I wasn't using it, so it was time to let it go.
Ciate London Smokey Suedes: Decluttered
This was also not an easy palette to get rid of, but I have only used it twice in the last six months. This was actually the palette that made me take a break from the one week, one palette project, because I just did not want to wear only this for a solid week. There are so many pretty shadows in here, but none that I don't have elsewhere, so I decided to let it go.
Juvia's Place Nubian 2: Decluttered
This was the hardest item to get rid of in this entire lot. I fell so hard for this palette when I used it for the one week, one palette project, and I especially loved Nairobi, Nefertiti, Jezebel, and Leyla. Thing is, I have not reached for this palette once since I used it in one week, one palette. I know if the shadow pans were smaller, I would totally depot the shades I just mentioned, but they are not, and I don't want to repress them into smaller pans. I have similar shadows to those anyway, and the stress of feeling guilty about not using this palette finally got the better of me. It's a beautiful palette that I really enjoyed using, but I just have too much in my collection, and I wasn't reaching for it.
Lime Crime Venus: Depotted/Downsized
This is a palette that I really enjoy, but I found myself never reaching for it because of the bulky packaging and because it was buried under some other products in my collection. I really loved the artwork on the front of this palette, and even left it out for display once upon a time, but me not wanting to get rid of the packaging was actually keeping me from using the products inside. So, I decided to depot. I didn't intend to downsize any shadows in the process, but I also decided to downsize my custom Viseart palette (see below), and wanted to move the shadows from the Neutral Matte palette into the new custom palette. When I decided to do that, I realized I didn't need Creation and Icon, so I ditched those two shadows.
Here is the new custom palette:
Includes: Natasha Denona (top left), Lime Crime Venus (top right), Viseart Neutral Matte (bottom left), and Too Faced Chocolate Bon Bons (bottom right).
Pur Soul Mattes: Depotted/Downsized
I'll just say right now that if you have this palette, you should not depot it. I have never experienced a more challenging project that ruined every single shadow in the palette. But, here's the thing about this palette. It looks like the perfect pink/mauve companion palette, but across the board, it's just not. The three lightest shades (two on the far left, one on the far right) all perform essentially the same on my skin. The third shadow in did not look mauve on me at all, and definitely leaned more brown; the reddish shade was nothing special when compared with Muse from the Venus palette; and I had shadows like the dark and light browns elsewhere in my collection. I knew I didn't want the entire palette, but there were still shadows I was interested in keeping, which is why I attempted to depot them. Again, it was a terrible experience, but in the end, I'm happy with the shadows I kept, which were the two shades on the far left, the fourth shadow, and and the light brown shadow. They are now in the new custom Viseart palette. I suspect that as time progresses, these shadows may end up decluttered as well, but as of now I am happy with the ones that have remained.
Viseart Sultry Muse and Paris Nudes: Downsized
This is what my Viseart custom palette used to look like. This was a combination of Sultry Muse:
Paris Nudes:
And Neutral Matte.
And, here's the thing. There were some shadows that I really loved in this palette, and that's what made me want to keep all of it. But there were also some shadows that were not great at all. And I think because I paid so much money for them, I just did not want to admit to myself that I didn't like them all that much. But really delving into singles and indie shadows has made me see what I like and expect from a shadow, and I just had to admit that I wasn't crazy about a lot of these colors. So, I decluttered 10 shadows from both of these palettes. I am now only left with these:
In this palette, there are 11 Viseart shadows from Sultry Muse (primarily) and Paris Nudes, Make Up For Ever Pearl, one Natasha Denona shadow, and four shadows from Pur Soul Mattes.
This Frankenstein's Monster palette is now a perfect palette for me. I can see traveling with this in a heartbeat. I'm excited to see the use this gets now.
And since I took all the shadows out of the Inglot flexi palette, I was able to put all my Inglot shadows together in that palette. I had a 10-pan palette and a 5-pan palette, and now they are all combined:
Looking at my makeup collection now, which is still very large, I have to say that I feel a bit of relief. My palettes are not crammed into drawers and buried in a game of Tetris. There is some room to breathe, and I think that will have a great impact on my mindset.
Finally, I would like to close this post with a note about depotting. It is not for everyone, and if it is not for you, that's okay. But the main reason I hear from people who don't want to depot is that they can't imagine doing that to their palettes. And I think that mindset can be flawed in a lot of ways, because a lot of it has an undercurrent of the hype/consumerist mindset. Some people like to have order to things and don't like asymmetry, and my comments are not for the people who chose not to depot because of these reasons.
At the end of the day, unless a makeup item is a collectible to you, it is a product intended to be used. And if you're not using something because of the palette it is in or because you don't like the majority of colors, you're essentially wasting your money and the product by having it just sit there untouched. I think a lot of people don't want to depot because if they do, when their favorite person on YT holds up that palette and talks about it, they will have the fear of missing out. But that's silly to me. Depotting helps you get the most out of your shadows, even if that means losing some of them or combining them with other shadows that aren't exactly the same shape.
Depotting also really helps show the duplicates in your collection. It's essentially doing what I propose in many of my anti-haul posts, which is to look at the shadows as pigments away from the packaging. When you look at shadows that way, you see what you already have. And that's what happens for me when I depot.
I have already gotten a lot more use of out several shadows that I wasn't using previously, so this has been a successful endeavor for me.
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