By BR Kellie
The release of Tiding Up With Marie Kondo on Netflix has take the woman who took the world by storm with her ‘spark joy’ philosophy to the next level and introduced millions more to her KonMari Method.
In case you've been too busy enjoying the summer sun to get your KonMari on and are wondering what the heck I'm on about... The KonMari Method is a way of tidying where rather than going room by room you go category by category – say for example, you’d start with your clothes, then go to books, then accessories etc. In each category you make a point of holding onto every item with both hands to see if it sparks joy within you. If it does, you keep the item. If no joy is felt, you toss it.
Back in 2016 I spark joyed my makeup stash... and failed to get rid of any of it - well, apart from some gungy lipsticks. It's safe to say thought that the last three years has seen that stash balloon even further. So once again I decided to hit up my stash to see what joy could be felt, or not - this time with the intention of getting rid of that which did not give me a case of the happies.
First up I pulled my eyeshadow palettes – all 24 of them. (Fun fact: In 2016 I thought my collection was large with eight palettes. Gulp. I think I need an intervention, haha.) Interestingly enough 11 out of 24 succeeded the ‘spark joy’ test. All my ABH palettes made me smile. The KKW X Mario got a scowl. A Smashbox palette didn't make the cut. A Covergirl palette did. Charlotte Tilbury - no. Ciaté - yes.
Out of four foundations one sparked joy while the other three did not.
Next I decided to spark joy my 52 lipsticks. (This was 30 back in 2016. I'm a makeup monster! Someone get me a spot on hoarders!) 20 survived the spark joy test. TWENTY. Which had me wondering... why am I holding on to 32 lipsticks I'm NEVER going to use?
And so I went, separating the stash into yay or nay piles. The whole time wondering why I kept onto so many products that I was very unlikely to use. In the end the stash would have been more than decimated but not quite annihalated.
Did you catch the 'would have' instead of 'was'?
Thing is, once again, I couldn't bring myself to part with all the pretties. Two of the foundations, yes. They were old and looked terrible on my skin. But the lippies? The highlighters? The bronzers? If they were from the dark ages and smelt funny - out they went. Despite not liking 13 of the eye palettes I could only bring myself to get rid of the ancient ones. The rest I could not part with. Which is ridiculous, I know. But I like to play. I like to swatch. And, to be honest, they'll probably eventually end up being given to my daughter to play with, or she'll use them as art supplies - but for the time being I just like to look at them, to know they're there. And that sparks joy in me.
So tell me, do you think you could ‘spark joy’ your makeup stash AND toss out the less than joyous products? Have you already done so? What were your findings? Chat away…
I could try!