Clean out your Cosmetics

Master-Cleanse Your Makeup Bag

You probably know people who are trying juice fasts to lose weight. Well, here's another way to lighten your load — a program to figure out what makeup to toss and what to keep in your purse.

By Amber Katz

With beach season approaching, everyone wants to slim down. Some excess baggage is easier to drop than others, of course, and one of the quickest ways to lose some weight is to clean out your makeup bag. A thorough cosmetics bag clean-out helps you ditch detritus and update your look at the same time. Sift through your wasteland of half-used lipsticks and cracked blushes with this advice on how to make your makeup bag sleeker, thinner, and a size or two smaller.

Download the Goods
Start by dumping all your makeup out on a table. Then do a smell check to assess what needs to be tossed. If an item has a weird chemical odor or claylike smell, get rid of it.

Set Free the Free Stuff
"Ironically, people have the hardest time throwing out products that they received for free," says Raychel Wade, a makeup artist and Colour Ambassador for La Prairie. "If you haven't used a product in six months, you're never going to, so just get rid of it."

Salvage Your Shadows
Rather than let crumbly containers ruin your bag, turn cracked shadows into loose shadow. “If you have a favorite eye shadow whose case has broken, salvage it by crushing it up and putting it into a little clear container you can buy at the Container Store,” says Carmindy, What Not to Wear's makeup expert.

Clean Up Your Act
This advice gets ignored because it's time consuming, but the fact remains that brushes should be cleaned every few days. “If you let makeup build up on your brushes, the bristles are going to break down faster, your makeup will look muddy, and blending will become harder,” explains Carmindy. Dirty brushes can also lead to breakouts because oils from your skin adhere to the bristles.
All you need to remedy the matter is some cleanser, a sink, and a towel to lay your brushes out on to dry. Try Sonia Kashuk's Brush and Sponge Cleanser ($7), which comes in a convenient spray bottle.

Keep a Cosmetics Calendar
Did you know that cosmetics are not required to carry an expiration date? Did you also know that once you open a product, oxidation of the contents begins immediately? Some cosmetics manufacturers help you determine the shelf life of your makeup by featuring on labels the symbol of a little pot with a number (usually in months) to indicate when you should toss a product.
The problem is, few of us log the dates we open cosmetics in our Excel “expiration file.” But there is a solution. Waterproof Beauty Alert! stickers help you by providing a place to make note of when you open a product; you can also use Beauty Alert's iPhone app.

Don’t Forget the Bag
Once you’ve tossed your old cosmetics and carefully labeled your new ones, the last step is to clean out the inside of your cosmetics bag with a disinfectant wipe. Then you can put back in all your shiny, cleaned-up cosmetics.