Last week I wrote about my massive beauty-product purge, ranging from shampoos and conditioners to lipstick and fragrance and everything in between.

This week, I will show you the fruits of that (very very hard) labor, in the form of a much nicer bathroom. Not just showing makeup products, but ALL of the products I reduced and condensed, and the total effect that had on my bathroom.

What Remained After the Purge

Makeup

About four years ago, I quit wearing full-face makeup all the time. Not coincidentally, I started dating my awesome boyfriend of win around that time–as we got to know each other, I found myself not feeling the need to wear much makeup around him, because he was always so positive about my appearance. When we purged the bathroom, I realized I didn’t need all the random makeup I was hoarding; either it was out-of-date, the wrong colors, or it just wasn’t necessary anymore. Thus, my collection was edited waaaaay down, into what you see below.

Clockwise from top left: New York Color Color Wheel Mosaic Powders in Translucent Highlighter Glow (top left) and Pink Cheek Glow (top right); E.L.F. Bronzer in Sun Kissed; Clinique Superpowder Double Face Makeup in Matte Ivory

True story–these four products are all that I use for face makeup these days. (Concealer has either never worked right or I never learned how to apply it without it looking blotchy and fake, so I don’t bother buying it anymore. And I find that the Superpowder does a fair job of covering most flaws anyway. ^_^) The bronzer, blush, and translucent powder over top gives me a naturally-finished look without taking too long.

From left: Revlon Illuminance Creme Shadow in Precious Metals; New York Color Metro Quarter Eye Shadow in South Street Seaport; CoverGirl Eye Enhancers in Drama Eyes #222 (left) and Tropical Fusion* #205 (right). Eye pencil (between the eye palettes) is New York Color Kohl Brow/Eyeliner Pencil in Jet Black.
*unsure of exact product name

Just these four eye palettes make it possible to mix nearly any color I want without having to buy every single shade. I can make a dark green, for instance, by taking the teal shade and adding a little black and a little brown; I can make a light purple by mixing the dark burgundy, the dark blue, and a little white. And, of course, they are all lovely shades to wear on their own. (The cream shadows, at far left, are great highlighters or bases, depending on what I need–they show up darker in this picture than they really are.)

From left: CoverGirl Wetslicks in Shimmershell; L.A. Colors Glossy Lips in Jammin’ Jelly; Neutrogena MoistureShine glosses in Healthy Blush (left) and Berry (right); New York Color lipstick in Ruby #305; Beauty Innovations lip palette, unknown name.

I reduced my lip makeup collection SEVERELY. These are all the lipsticks I own now, and they, like the eye products, can be mixed together to get the precise shade I’m after. I prefer glossier/smoother textures, and so most of my collection focuses around that.

The Glossy Lips gloss (second from left) is not really that dark, by the way–see it in the light, below:

Bath Products

From nearly a tubful of bottles, we shrunk my impressive shampoo collection down to this small drawer; we got rid of at least 150 shampoo bottles to condense it down to what I really use and like. I’ve got four basic formulas I like: light conditioning, heavy conditioning, super-cleansing, and volumizing. Thus, each of the bottles in this drawer does one of the four functions.

Since I hate having the “extra step” of conditioning in the shower every day, I have considerably fewer conditioners. Most of these conditioners match a super-cleansing or light conditioning shampoo.

I kid you not, we got rid of over 50 different shower gel bottles, and now I have room to spare in this little drawer. I generally like clearer, less-creamy shower gels with light fragrances, so that’s largely what my small collection is about. (I’m also in the process of phasing out shower gels in favor of scented bar soaps, which last longer and are cheaper.)

Fragrances

Okay, okay, I admit it, I like body sprays and scented stuff. And maaaaaybe I could stand to reduce this just a touch more. But considering that we hauled out 2 big black trash bags full of nothing but old perfume bottles… 🙂

I had been storing my sprays and lotions alongside my shower gels in that little drawer. But the drawer was way too small to hold all that awesome in it, and I was always forgetting to use the sprays because they were hidden away. Thus, I got this white-painted metal spice rack from Walmart for about 10 bucks, to create a “fragrance display” in my bathroom.

See? Looks a lot better than them just sitting out on the counter in a big conglomerate mess. (Oh, and the sprig of blue flowers beside them is there just ’cause it’s pretty. ^o^)

Hair Notions and Jewelry

I usually have longer hair most of the time, so I have tons of scrunchies, clips, and smooth bands to craft it into “cool hair,” as my boyfriend describes it. But in order to get my collection into a more manageable size, I had to edit and toss a bunch of stuff.

This is my much-reduced selection of bigger hair notions–I used to have about 3,000 of those big hair clips back in the day. LOL…

…but I still have a ton of little hair notions in the form of tiny clips and bands. What can I say, it’s a work in progress!

And these are all the smaller scrunchies that wouldn’t fit on my big ole scrunchie rack.

“Scrunchie rack?” you say. “What’s a scrunchie rack?”

THIS:

It was a hand-towel rack. I saw the unique, flattened “S” shape of the rack, below…

…and I thought, “Hey, I think I could thread my scrunchies onto that.” So I repurposed it…

…like so. It might look like a confusion of fabric (and it kinda is), but there’s organization there. Now I can see all the scrunchies at once and pick one off fairly easily.

Speaking of racks, here’s the slightly-Asian-inspired jewelry rack I picked up on clearance from Walmart:

Where once my jewelry was in scattered bags all over the house, now it has a permanent (and pretty) home in the bathroom, safely away from hungry sink drains. Awwwh yeah.

Other Items

When I said my boyfriend and I cleaned the bathroom, we cleaned out EVERYTHING and made space for EVERYTHING that was left. Like my soap/razors/hair products drawer:

Uh, yeah, this is slightly still a work in progress. But at least I always know where the soap is now, instead of having to dig through 4 cabinets and 2 drawers!

That’s right, I dedicated a whole bathroom drawer to brushes. And yes, I do use every single one of them, depending on styling needs. No more knocking stuff off the cabinet tops to find that one stinkin’ brush that’s hiding from me!

And because I had no set place for my toothbrushes, cough drops, bandages, etc, I dedicated the drawer on the other side of the sink to hold such supplies. It’s the unofficial “medicine cabinet.” (And yes, I regularly need that many Band-Aids. I am one of the clumsiest, most accident-prone people ever. The first-aid companies <3 me.)

The Proudest Achievement: Organization in the Bathroom

First off, this thing rocks my socks.

It only stands about a foot or so tall, but held within it is all my makeup (top two drawers) and most of my hair notions (bottom three drawers).

Face stuff (plus a few beauty tools)…

…and everything else makeup-y. See? It all fits!

Combine that with the awesomeness of the racks holding my jewelry, fragrances, and scrunchies, and you get this:

…I’m finally bathroom-proud. It may not be the best-looking, it may still be in progress, but I’m using the space a lot better than I ever did before.

And LOOK! I can see the color of the countertops!! That, in itself, is a massive achievement. 😀 😀 😀