The New Year is a great time to get a new lease on your lipstick collection!
Y’all, if you haven’t guessed already: I have too many lipsticks. They’re too easy to just pick up while you’re out and about, tag onto an order, or accumulate in kits, freebies, and well-intentioned gifts.
Part of the reason I have so many was a lipstick exploration – what looks good on me? What do I feel good in? How do I wear it in the first place?
So now I’ve got this collection… ranging from (mumble mumble) years old to a few months old.
A disclaimer: I’m not a medical practitioner or a scientist of any kind, and I’m not advocating for use of products beyond their expiration dates. However, I make the personal choice to use a lipstick until the smell, texture or colour changes. At the end of a day in a bullet lipstick, I wipe off a layer which may have accumulated some more obvious “stuff”, and if it’s been a while since I’ve used one I’ll give it an alcohol wipe before it goes into use. Not a foolproof strategy by any means, but I thought I should address the whole “how old is too old: expired lipstick” debate!
Here’s the big question: How do I actually enjoy my collection? Do I do a lipstick project pan? Do I rotate through them? Do I make a lipstick capsule?
This past year, I tried out some methods of organizing my lipstick collection for “optimal use” (I’m really talking about my most cherished vice: bullet lipsticks). Allow me to share!
How Many Lipsticks to Include in My Collection?
It’s pretty overwhelming being confronted with a large volume of lipstick that you love and want to use and enjoy. I wanted to curate my collection down to a select few(ish) to focus on rotating through, so my first step was to decide how large my collection could reasonably be.
How did I decide on the right number of lipsticks? I used lipstick longevity as a basis. For better or worse, here’s my thought process:
- I like to wear lipstick every day, and I’m usually a generous toucher-upper. So, let’s say it takes about three to four months to pan (finish) a lipstick. Generously, that should mean I could get through about four lipsticks per year.
- Now your mileage may vary, but for me, I will say on average I could expect the life of a typical bullet lipstick to be about five years.
- If I can get through four lipsticks per year, and each lipstick has a lifespan of about five years, then I’m comfortable that I could enjoy having about 20 lipsticks in my collection at a time.
This is generous of course, as there will inevitably be some days that I don’t wear a bullet lipstick and their true lifespans will vary, but you gotta start somewhere, right?
Then it’s a matter of choosing which lipsticks join the collection!
Choosing Which Lipsticks to Include in my Collection
I created a way to systematically select which lipsticks would join my collection of twenty. I wanted to consider the following factors:
- Shade – I want to make sure there’s a wide range so that all of my bases are covered with just this collection
- Formula – I like to have a range of formulas as well (eg. I love a matte, but I also want more moisturizing formulas to round out the collection)
- Age – Since we’re not starting with a clean slate, if there are older bullets that I love, I definitely want to make sure they’ll get some use this year as part of my collection
- Panability – Although I’m not specifically doing a “project pan”, I did think it would be helpful to actually make some progress by panning some lipsticks this year, so this becomes a factor in selecting my collection
With these factors in mind, I went through my inventory and added to my collection of twenty category-by-category:
- Easy pans
- Oldies but goodies
- The fancy ones
- The rest
Let’s take a look at each category!
Easy Pans: To Pare Down the Collection Faster
Honestly, I factored in “panability” because I have a few unopened lippies that I want to dive into, but I just can’t rotate them in until I’ve made space for them. (The clock is ticking on the lifespan of those unopened lippies too, by the way!) To feel like I’m making progress in working through my collection, and to make space for the gems to come, I decided to prioritize some “easy pans” first.
What makes an “easy pan”? The quickest lipsticks to pan are lipsticks that are more than halfway finished, minis, and pencils (that require sharpening). Bonus panability points if the bullet has a very soft, moisturizing (emollient) formula.
The plan is to have these “easy pans” front and center in the collection. If I have to choose between a couple “easy pans” (for example, if two lipsticks would be too similar in shade and formula in my collection), I might lean toward the older version, so long as it’s still good, which gives me a better chance of also enjoying the newer version later on.
How many of these are included? Well, it depends how many I actually have. I’ve got five, so those will take up the first five spots in my collection. If I had five, but two were too similar, I’d only add four to my collection for now.
Oldies but Goodies: To Make the Most of My Older Favourites
Next up: older lipsticks that I absolutely love. I went for a period without wearing lipstick (gasp!), so some of my most favourite bullets are probably approaching the end of their useful lives due to that missed time, and I want to make sure I get to spend as much time enjoying them as possible before they expire!
The goal here isn’t necessarily to pan the lipstick, it’s just to continue to enjoy some of my favourites while they’re still useable. I’ll pick however many constitute my absolute favourites in this category and add them to my collection. Currently I have five of those, and because I love them, I don’t mind if there is shade or formula overlap in this category.
The Fancy Ones: Adding Little Luxuries to Typical Day
This next category is for those lipsticks that evaded the “easy pan” classification and did not fall into the “oldies but goodies” category. I call them “The Fancy Ones”. These are simply what I consider to be my pricier lipsticks (for me that’s Charlotte Tilbury, Hourglass, Natasha Denona, and similar).
It just happens that I really love all of my “fancy” lipsticks, and they’re all relatively new (save for a couple of minis). All of these get automatic spots in my collection, regardless of formula or shade overlap.
If The Fancy Ones took up the rest of my collection, that’s okay with me! Why? Well, there’s just a thing about having spent a certain sum of money on a lipstick – sunk cost fallacy aside, you really just want to get your money’s worth out of it, right?
It’s easy to think the other way as well – I don’t want to use my fancy lipsticks up, I want to save them for special occasions! I have bought into this in the past as well, but nowadays I’ve come to adopt the mindset that those lipsticks are here to enjoy, regardless how much they cost! Rather than saving them for special occasions only, I’d like to use and enjoy them while they’re in their prime!
So go ahead and include The Fancy Ones in your collection. Enjoy sprinkling a little luxury throughout your day – you deserve it!
The Rest: Rounding Out the Collection
Okay, I don’t have that many fancy lipsticks in my inventory, so there’s still room for “the rest”. The rest simply didn’t make it into the last three categories, so they’re usually newer but not part of my “fancy collection”. Think drugstore lipsticks that I enjoy using but I know they’ll kick around for a few years and so there’s less urgency to use them.
This is a great chance to fill in any gaps; for example, my L’Oreal Paris Glow Paradise Balm-in-Lipstick is added in here to round out my formulas (it’s possibly the most moisturizing, gentle-on-the-lips lipstick I own). I’ll also pick a coral, as this shade wasn’t covered by any of the first three categories for me.
Fill up the remaining spots in your collection of twenty however you see fit!
The Final Edit
Phew, that was a lot of curating, but we’re not done yet! I like to take one final look over my collection of twenty and see whether any edits are needed for:
- Unintentional dupes that made it into the collection (remove either the oldest or your least-favourite of the dupes)
- Lipsticks that on second thought, I’m not that excited to use (swap it out with something that is exciting!)
If there are some lipsticks I haven’t used in a while that made it into the collection, I’ll make a point to wear them soon and just evaluate whether or not they really do belong in the collection (whether I still enjoy them, whether the shade works for me, etc.).
Finally, just as a bit of a motivator, I like to look at any unopened lippies I’d love to rotate into my collection, and see which collection lipsticks they might replace one day. (I try not to have a lot of unopened lippies, but ’tis the season!) This is especially useful in the “easy pan” category. For example, I’ll bring in a brand new Pillow Talk once I’ve finished my easy-to-pan mini Pillow Talk. I might rotate in Le Wood Nonchalant once I’ve panned my half-finished Velvet Teddy.
That’s it!
Hopefully after going through this process you will have a more manageable collection to work with throughout the year, one that you can really enjoy (and progress through). Another way to look at it: The opposite of “bringing things in” is “taking things out”, so if you were looking for a way to declutter, you may look at the bullets that didn’t make it into your collection and allow them to move on.
As for the collection you’ve curated, ideally you’ll be able to rotate through all of them in a way that works for you, so that you can truly enjoy each bullet!
Using Your Collection
What exactly you do with your collection is up to you and depends on your goals and how you like to interact with your collection. Some ideas:
- Focus on your “easy pan” lipsticks as your default daily lipsticks to move through them faster, sprinkling others in if you feel you need a change.
- Create a seasonal “lipstick capsule”, akin to a capsule wardrobe but with a small selection of lipsticks from your reduced collection for each season.
- Pick 7 lipsticks for the month, one representing the vibe of each day of the week.
- Put them all in a basket, close your eyes and pick one at random each day.
I plan to write more on all the various ways you can enjoy your lipstick collection in the future, so if you’re into it, stay tuned!
In the meantime, may your lipstick collection bring you lots of joy in the New Year! Sending you lots of love!
