Beauty Tips

The 8 Stages of Organizing Your Beauty Products (and Your Life)

Can tidying up help you get your sh*t together and change your life? We investigate

by Allie Flinn | 2 COMMENTS

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Stage 1: Organize ALL the Things Kondo's first tip and my determination to get organized conveniently line up: She recommends organizing everything in one fell swoop; I was ready to tackle every. last. product.

Technically, Kondo says if you're getting serious about cleaning, you need to do your entire pad all at once; otherwise, you risk slipping back into your old, messy-person habits. For the purposes of this story, I applied her principles for cleaning the whole house to just my beauty products (which, admittedly, take up a huge chunk of my apartment). This means I went through and discarded things by category (hair care, skin care, body, makeup), starting with the easiest products to get rid of (the ones I care least about -- sorry, hair care) and ended with the "love letters and sentimental items" of my beauty collection -- makeup.

I walked into my bathroom, took a look at the shelves overflowing with hair products and the end table packed full of makeup, and naively thought: Self, you are ready for this.

SEE NEXT PAGE: Stage 2: Why Do I Have So Many Products?

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