Spring Cleaning Purge #1: Health and Beauty Products

I have been on a weird, pre-spring cleaning rampage in my house lately. Even though we only moved in a year ago, I still had too much stuff laying around. One of my major areas to tackle was the bathroom. Over the years I have amassed a huge number of travel sized, sample sized products. I pared them down when I moved, but still kept a large number, thinking well if we ever have guests over unexpectedly, I will be prepared. Yeah, ok. I think his son has been over once at Christmastime. I am just not the entertaining sort.

So with all this free time on my hands, it was time to purge. I took everything out of both bathrooms and placed it in a huge mess on the bedroom floor. I also dug out all of my old Ipsy pouches. Scary mess huh?

When I first sat down to start I was like "What the heck, where do I even begin?" I started with my makeup (which you can't see in this pic, it's to the side in front of the cute grey kitty on a mission) I have a 8 drawer plastic organizer and a drawer in the bathroom that was full of makeup. If you know me in real life, you would be like WTF? as I am rarely seen wearing makeup. Don't ask. It was a phase.



Between coupon savings, my subscription to Ipsy (which btw is an awesome monthly makeup subscription box if you are looking for one!), and winning contests I had quite a bit of new, unopened unused makeup. Now what to do with it all? I dug through, saving items I had used or enjoy using. Everything else...gone. What to do with it? I didn't really feel right about selling it, so I thought I should donate it to a women's shelter! These women have often been through a lot, and a little makeup may help brighten their day.

I went through all my travel size shampoo, deodorant, lotions etc which once again were nearly all free samples. I kept a few as my boyfriend and I are hopefully going on a motorcycle trip this summer, but the rest are going. Once again, I felt a women's shelter would be a perfect place to donate these too. I used my old Ipsy pouches to make up little kits with shampoo, conditioner, lotion, and body wash. All the extras will be donated as well.

As for the dreaded time of the month products, I had a huge supply of tampons (which I never use) that were all free samples. Once again, great thing to donate!

How did I get so many free samples? I will go into detail on another post (and link it here) but a quick summary is websites that specialize in samples, Facebook, and on-product packaging promotions.