Project Pan 2025 Revisited

Way back in February of this year, I posted about starting a Project Pan in 2025. At that time these were all my personal hygiene and beauty products that I needed to use up, all 241 of them.

I'm pretty sure that progress this year has been slow. I kept on replacing items I finished and bought a few extras here and there too, whilst using up the odd item pictured here, but not many.

Anyway, in my current situation of no longer working and earning money, I can't afford to spend money on things that I really don't need or use and it would be useful to save myself a bit of money by using things that I already have to hand, so I thought it might be a good time to revisit this project and get a bit more serious about it. There's still 4 months of the year left and I might be able to make a bit of progress and at least get the number of items down to below the 200 mark.

I figured that I'd better do another count, but I was a bit nervous that it might be even bigger than it had been in my initial post. So once again, I laid everything I could find out on the bed upstairs, took a picture and wrote down how many of each item I currently had in use or waiting to be used. Here's an updated picture:

I have to say at this point, and you may find this strange considering the number of items that I have, but I'm not particularly into beauty products in a big way. I have a few tried and tested favourites that I use regularly and re-buy where possible when I run out. The accummulation of the above, has mainly been a result of trying to find solutions for problems I've faced, (i.e. treatments for dry hair, moisturisers that don't break me out, etc. etc.), trying (and often failing) to find substitutes for products that have been discontinued and I can no longer get hold of, stocking up on items that I do use, (because I'm worried about not being able to afford or get hold of them in the future), or just that insidious habit of treating myself to something small, by adding the odd lipstick or other item to my shopping basket on far too many occasions.

There is probably enough skincare here to last me a couple of years at least, but going forward, I'm going to try to use up some of the items that are not my regular favourites to try to get this pile down. I'm currently using a facial wash and serum that are not regular favourites and I don't seem to be breaking out, so I'm going to try more of these and see if they work okay for me.

Lipsticks are a particular issue, as you can see from the photo. I've divided them between summer and winter colours, as I tend to wear reds in the winter and pinks and oranges in the summer. Some of the lip balm and sample products I've had a very long time and they've probably gone off, so I might discard a few of these items.

I've been working on stopping putting new items in my shopping basket when out and about and now try to completely avoid it, but I can't say that I've 100% recovered from this habit. However, now that I'm not working and earning money, it has made me question every purchase and I no longer buy more than I need. If I run out of deodourant, toner or hairspray, I'll buy one to replace it not two or three. 

Anyway, I digress, so where am I with this project now, 7 months later and how many personal hygiene and beauty products am I currently using or have waiting to be used. The answer to this question is 214, so not many less than the previous count, but I did add some things to this count that I didn't to the last, namely tissues, cotton pads, etc. which added 12 items, so if I took these off I'm around about the 200 mark.  I was a little shocked when I recounted, as I thought I might have made better progress this year, but sadly I haven't. I just need to try harder and now I've got less money, I have the motivation to do better. 

To be honest, there are some items in the picture that I can straight away discard, i.e. most of the nail varnishes, fake nails, fake eyelashes, nail stickers. I no longer wear nail varnish, save for the very odd special occasion. I did have a period of wearing it this year, which resulted in the worst split nails I've ever experienced and I vowed that I would use it as sparingly as possible going forward, as it does more harm than good for me. I may just keep half a dozen bottles for my toenails in the summer and get rid of the rest. If they are pretty full, I will probably donate them, if not they'll be hitting the bin. Likewise, I don't wear false nails, as the glue causes damage to my nails and I don't wear false eyelashes, so it's pointless keeping any of these items too. If they are unopened they will be donated.

With regard to the rest of the items, I will endeavour to try and use as much as I can in the time that is left of this year and see where that gets me. I can't really see me hitting pan on the lot any time soon, but I'll keep you posted on my progress, which I'm hoping will be better than it has been so far this year.