I'm doing a Beauty No-Buy
It's happening. Join me!
I’ve touched on this before but as I transitioned out of my last job, I found myself overwhelmed by the amount of makeup I have. I haven’t purchased a lot of newness in the last year but I still feel like it’s always too much. I’m wearing pretty minimal makeup these days and while I do that, I just want to finish what I have.
I decided before the new year to do a No Buy for 2025. There are rules, of course, because it’s clearly not that simple for me. And while I won’t be adding to the bulk, which will help, I also will continue to do clean-outs and share unused or lightly used, sanitized items with friends and neighbors to actually downsize my collection.
Rule #1 No shopping in the name of research. This is a huge problem for me because I work in beauty and sometimes I need to know. The thing is…I don’t! Not anymore.
Rule #2 If I own it, I can re-stock it once it is absolutely down to the bottom. It has to be a 1:1 restock. Same item out, same item in.
Rule #3 If for some deranged reason I have to try something new, I have to get rid of 5 of something just like it. If I can’t do the latter, then I can’t get the new thing.
Something I started doing in the middle of last year pretty consistently was rotating items in my entire makeup bag every month. It has helped me “shop my collection” and added a bit of excitement to my routine to rediscover old favorites. This month, this is what I’ve shopped from my stash.
I looooove concealer! If you’ve been here, you’re familiar. I like to keep my base pretty straight forward with a light coverage skin tint or foundation. The Estée and Hourglass are in my top 5 for sure. I don’t see a lot of people talking about this Estée Sheer Double Wear and I think it is genuinely the best lightweight foundation with a natural finish ever. I keep a rotation of concealers for different concerns. I’ve gone through about four tubes of the Tower28 concealer at this point if that says anything at all about how much I like it. I absolutely could not do my makeup without the Westman Atelier concealer. It’s like a FaceTune filter in a tube. It took me a really long time to find my shade in the Haus Labs concealer but I absolutely love it. It has amazing coverage and wear.
I’ve been incredibly loyal to the Laura Mercer Ultra-Blur Translucent Powder ever since a makeup artist introduced me to it. Other loose powders have come close, but none compare. It is super seamless and works in every season as my skin changes. In the summer, I love to layer it with the Huda Beauty powder. Right now I’m doing a dusting of the Charlotte Tilbury pressed powder on top.
I am hit or miss on warming up my skin with bronzer and contouring. It depends on the occasion and my outfit! But I’m really into a light layer of cream right now when I do those steps so, obviously I’m sticking with two classics: The Saie Sun Melt Bronzer and the Westman Atelier Face Trace Contour Stick. Both are not sticky and super buildable. I like shaping/warmth that looks like my skin and not makeup. These do that!