I try to find the positives in most things.

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The latest positive I’ve found in the midst of the horror that is the world right now, is it gives me the opportunity to use up a lot of products I have lying around.

Last year I wrote about my desire to go a bit more minimalist in life, and use up some of the many things I was hoarding and buy less. This has been going really well and there’s certain things I’ve barely purchased in the past year while I’ve been focused only purchasing replacement products.

Despite that, there’s still some things this affords me the opportunity to use up. These fall in two categories:

1. Products that don’t work that great for me, and so I don’t like to use them often.
2. Items I rarely get around to using, and I have a substantial backlog.

Hopefully to inspire you to do the same, I’m sharing the items in each of those categories.

When this is all over I’ll share my lockdown empties to see how well I did.

1. Shampoo & Conditioner

Finding a decent hair routine is tricky. I now have a combo I’m really enjoying – Charles Worthington Charcoal Shampoo and Kerastase Nutritive Lait Vital*. This does mean I have a couple of products I need to use up that don’t work for me for a variety of reasons. Now people are only seeing my via a webcam during Skype meetings, I can use these not-quite-perfect haircare products without issue.

First up is a shampoo bar from The Yorkshire Soap Co. I’d not had much luck with shampoo bars previously. They had weighed down my oily hair and made the grease worse. I was recommended Salty Beach in the shop, with the assistant telling me it wouldn’t sit heavy on my hair. They were right, it really doesn’t. However, it did leave my hair feeling dry sometimes meaning I needed to use a conditioner with it. Conditioner also tends to make my hair oily (see below) so this shampoo bar isn’t sadly the plastic-free alternative I was looking for.

Next we have the L’Oréal Extraordinary Clay shampoo. This is another decent shampoo. It’s made for oily hair like mine and is nice enough. However, if I use it every day (or every other day) it can sometimes leave my hair feeling dry, particularly on the ends. This will still be my back up purchase if I ever can’t find the Charles Worthington shampoo, but I may as well use this now while I’m not leaving the house too much.

Finally, one of my favourite conditioners that sadly just doesn’t like my hair. The Intensive Repair Conditioner does exactly what it says on tin. It leaves my hair soft and beautiful, but a little heavy. If I use this, I definitely need to wash my hair the next day. When my hair is lighter (I’m currently very dark brown) and thus a bit drier, I can get away with it. At the moment though, it just makes me hair too greasy (unlike the Kerastase that I have switched to). So, I’ll be using this up during lockdown to keep my hair healthy.

1. Face moisturisers

There’s just a couple of items in here, The Ordinary and Hyggee. Both of these moisturisers are nice enough but not quite good enough for what I need right now. I need something super moisturising that will help with the fine lines that are sadly appearing. These two items are sadly just not intense enough for me. I’ll be using these up and saving my Tatcha Dewy Skin Cream that I received in my Cosmetips box for when I can leave the house again.

2. Minis and samples

I have so many of these now. Given that I won’t be travelling any time soon I figure now is the time to start working through some of them. These are handy for weekends away, but for an actual holiday I’ll probably want to decant my trusted skincare routine into refillable pots anyway. So the only way I’m going to get through some of these is by actually using them now, and if I don’t get along well with something, then I’ll just not turn my camera on for calls for a few days.

2. Body moisturiser

I wrote a post, I think two years ago now about how much moisturiser I had. I never get around to using it because my time on a morning is precious. Plus, it’s just one of those things I hate to do (pedicures also fall into this category). In the past few years I’ve bought just one full size moisturiser (and that’s because it came in a holiday set) and I’m now finally in a place where I’m almost done with my last full size. I have a good chunk of minis to go through after that, but then I can finally purchase a full size of my favourite – from Elemis*. Elemis do moisturiser like no other. Their hand and body creams are amazing, without being too greasy.

I’m hoping the side effect of consistently moisturising will lead this to becoming a habit once lockdown has finished.

2. Face masks

Another thing I should do more often and don’t! I have quite a few sheet masks still in my stash that I really need to work through (if they haven’t expired). I also have quite a few regular masks that need using up. Once they’re all used, I will then only purchase one mask at a time going forward, as I really don’t use them often enough to have as many as I do currently.

2. Hand creams

I think these will get used naturally thanks to all the hand washing. But, I do have quote a few tubes on the go. Some I really like (like the L’Occitane one) and others that are a bit ‘meh’ like the Bubble T tube. I’ve finally finished working my way through most of my minis so at least that side of things is slimmed down. All that’s left is cooling hand gel from L’Occitane but it doesn’t really moisturise my hands; I don’t really know what its use is, to be honest. But, I do need to not have so many full sizes hanging around. This is another thing I want to make a habit during lockdown, as my dry hands are one of my worst features.

2. Eye make up

I have lots of lovely eyeshadow and really don’t wear it enough. I’m going to take the opportunity during lockdown to experiment with it a bit more and find some eye looks that work for me. I’m not very brave when it comes to the eyes and rarely wear more than one colour. I’d love to perfect some glamorous eye looks to use once I can finally have a night out again!

I’ve made some real progress in downsizing my beauty collection in the past year and hope it’ll continue throughout lockdown.

Have you set out to use anything up during this time? Let me know in the comments, it might inspire me!

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