This year, after watching a Project Pan video on YouTube, I've decided to do my own Project Pan challenge in 2025. I haven't done this challenge for quite a few years, approximately 10 years to be exact, but I am currently in a place where I seem to have collected a lot of beauty products over the last few years, and it really is time to work my way through as many of them as possible this year.
With any Project Pan challenge, the first hurdle is collecting together all of your products. This is going to be a bit embarassing, especially in some areas such as dental care, as I have amassed a lot of these products in the last year and it will take me at least a few years to work my way through them. Some of them, mainly the toothpaste I use, I have to buy online, as they are not available in UK shops, so I have deliberately overstocked these in case they get prohibitively expensive in the future.
Anyway, I collected together all of the makeup, beauty, personal hygiene, dental products I could lay my hands on. They were mainly to be found either in the bathroom or bedroom. I have very few products in any other rooms in the house, save for maybe a couple in the kitchen.
Once I'd collected them all together, I laid them all out, according to category of product, like they do in in the TV programme Sort Your Life Out, which I often enjoy watching. This is always very illuminating, as you can see where your multiples are.
As you can see, there are hundreds, 241 items to be precise. I have to admit that some of them I will never use, such as some of the face creams, that I've already tried and that break me out. I'm not willing to go back to using these, as I really don't enjoy breaking out in spots in my 50's. I will probably have to throw these away, unless LB or OH will use them, but I doubt that LB will, as she already has way too many of her own products to use up and OH doesn't really use moisturisers, but maybe I could convert him. I don't enjoy throwing anything away, but sometimes there isn't really any other option.
Some other products, I might be able to enlist OH to help me use up. In particular, I'm thinking of any shower gels, as I don't tend to use use them, preferring a good old fashioned bar of soap. Also, I like to use a particular brand of soap, so any soaps of different brands, I may just grate up and use to make liquid hand soap at some point.
Skin care is one category where I have a lot of products and if I'm honest, I've not really been using many products in recent months, just a facial wash, toner and moisturiser. The above picture is mostly new unused products I have yet to use. Some are duplicates of things I use regularly, some are new to me products that I bought to try, but haven't. I think I definitely need to add other products into my routine in order to try to use up what I've got and to perhaps try to keep the years from showing quite so much.
With regard to makeup and nail varnishes, of which there is/are a lot, the nail varnishes and lipsticks are the items I have most of. I may donate some nail varnishes that I don't really like or wear, some, if they are a bit dried up, I may throw away and then divide the rest into everyday and holiday use and try to use them as often as I can. Historically, I've always had difficulty in growing my nails without them splitting badly, but recently, they have been growing well. I'm not sure whether some subtle dietary changes have had an effect or the fact that I've been using a nail strengthener more regularly has helped, but whatever it is it has worked and I've been able to wear nail varnish more often in recent months.
With makeup, I've got a few products that I know I won't use, as they are not a good colour match for my skin, so again, I may need to dispose of some of these. I do also have a ridiculous amount of lipsticks, 27 in total (not including lip balms), many of which I've had for years, but I will continue to use them as I do like to use them until they run out. I have my tried and tested everyday favourites, but I do need to make a concerted effort to use different colours sometimes, especially in the summer months, just to help use some of them up, otherwise they just don't get worn. I have to admit that many of my lipsticks are red and I've moved away from brighter reds in recent years, in favour of darker reds, so I don't know if I can comfortably go back to the bright ones, but I'll give it a try.
What I do know, is that my main weakness is when I go to inexpensive shops such as Home Bargains, Boyes or Poundland and drop a couple of low cost products into my basket to try when I get home. Over time, these purchases have really added up to get me to where I am currently and I really need to stop this habit and reduce the products I buy to only essential ones that I use regularly. I also need to get ruthless and reduce the amount of products I have in my stash.
After collecting everything together, I did manage to donate 5 or 6 unused products that I no longer want, I threw a couple of used but unsuitable ones away and a couple of bars of soap were grated up to use in making liquid soap, which I will make once I've used up the bought liquid soap I've already got in my stash. So I'm already 9 down which is progress. Just 232 more to go. I'd ideally like to get this number down to 100 or less, but I'll keep you posted with my progress over the coming months. Wish me luck.
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