How do you stop feeling overwhelmed by the size of your collection?
I recently made a complete inventory of my makeup, perfumes, body mists and body care products, and ever since then I’ve been feeling pretty overwhelmed by how much I actually own.
Before making the list, I obviously knew I had a lot, but seeing everything written down in one place made it feel very different. Now I keep thinking about how long it would realistically take me to use everything up, especially things like makeup, perfumes and body mists that can take forever to finish.
I don’t really want to sell or give away my products. Most of them have already been used, I like the majority of them, and I genuinely want to get use out of what I already own.
One thing that has been helping me a lot is tracking usage. I joined some usage challenges and started counting how many times I use each product. I’ve enjoyed this much more than I expected, and now I’m tracking usage for pretty much my entire collection. It makes me feel like I’m actually making progress even when I’m nowhere near finishing something.
But I still have this feeling of: when am I actually going to see a significant difference in the size of my collection? Tracking my usage shows me that I am using my products, but I have no idea when that progress will actually become visible.
Another problem is that I really enjoy variety. I get bored if I wear the same perfume/body mist or use the same makeup products every day for a week, so choosing one product from each category and using it exclusively until it’s finished would make me miserable. I want to enjoy my collection, not turn using it into a chore.
I should also mention that I’m not on a strict no-buy. I’ve definitely become much more conscious of what I own, but I still occasionally buy new products. I know that obviously means my collection will decrease more slowly, but I don’t want my goal to be “I’m not allowed to buy anything until I use all of this up.” I’d rather find a healthier balance where I can still enjoy beauty products while making good use of what I already have.
For those of you who also have larger collections and aren’t interested in decluttering everything: how do you deal with that overwhelmed feeling?
Do you track usage, rotate products, set monthly goals, do project pans, or have some other system that helps you feel like you’re making progress without forcing yourself to use the same products over and over?
And if you’ve been in a similar situation, how long did it take before you actually started noticing a difference in the size of your collection?
I’d especially love to hear from people with larger perfume/body mist or makeup collections, because those categories seem to take forever to show any visible progress. 😅