Those of you who have been readers of this blog for a while now, (silent or otherwise), will know that I have spoken many a times about the need for change and not buying more makeup - but this time it's a different kind of change. Let me explain. In the past, I've always set myself makeup spending bans, because my collection was growing and having a small disposable income, with not a lot of expenses meant I was able to treat myself almost monthly. The student discounts were also a convenient reason for me to splurge whenever I felt like it and lets be honest, becoming a beauty bloggers and consuming beauty related content daily definitely didn't help. I'd then essentially BINGE on buying more and more, spending a small or large amount of money and then spend the next couple of days either shrugging at the lack of savings in my account, or actually feeling pretty bad that I had managed to treat myself....again....and for what?
I was using shopping, splurging, treating myself, buying, materialism as a way to cope with stress, with being unhappy, as another form of procrastination and as an excuse for blogging too. Do you need to buy new things every month to blog successfully? Of course not! Even as a beauty blogger you don't, and if you reach a substantial following number then eventually you'll start being sent all the new stuff and it'll just become part and parcel of your daily routine and job - excuse the pun. Me on the other-hand, I was a student of psychology, and then I was a trainee teacher, so what reason did I have? Why did I keep indulging in online shopping? Why did the spending fail to stop? I guess I've outlined some of the key reasons already, shopping was becoming an unhealthy coping mechanism.
(If you're wondering how you can blog about beauty, without buying new stuff all the time, just try to be more creative with what you've got already. If you've reviewed your favourite foundation from the high-end, do a comparison of it with a cheaper brand. Or put it under different conditions, test how it wears depending on powder, primer etc. etc.)
Now fast forwards 2 years, I am a 22 year adult with a real proper job, earning 4 figures a month Alhamdulillah. I have a MUCH larger amount of money to spend frivolously, but all I can think, as I look around me is; my goodness am I overwhelmed with ALL the stuff I've gathered, collected, loving storing away in the past five years. Whilst starting my blog was easily one of my best life decisions, I can't lie and say that this part of it has made me feel good. That temporary excitement when I opened a parcel, or put yet another NARS blusher inside my precious muji storage had faded. On the one hand I had just started my little passion project: my very own youtube channel and I knew that talking about the latest things and keeping up with whatever is 'trending' is how I would really grow a following, but on the other hand, I was FED UP with squandering my money away to buy product after product, have bottles of things piling up and gathering dust and ultimately a pretty sparse bank, account despite me putting in hours and hours of work into my real job and my blogging hobby.
So when the xmas holidays were almost over and we had got the end of 2017, amongst many things going through my mind at the time, the first was HOW I could get out of this mentality and lets be honest - lifestyle, without quitting the social media world altogether. I'm not going to lie, I spend a LARGE chunk of my time on SM, mainly snapchat (before that hideous update), twitter, youtube and instagram. And I'm not ready to quit it or leave it behind. For me personally, there are far too many pros that outweigh the cons. I also didn't want to place myself on another ban, because they just don't work for me! Spending bans were becoming the same vicious 'refrain - succeed - cave in - binge - repeat' cycle, that so many people experience when they do on fad diets in order to lose weight. It. Just. Doesn't. Work. And thats when I came up with the idea of having a monthly makeup bag, and wait before you roll your eyes, I know I KNOW it's nothing revolutionary - or even particualrly interesting. But it solved so many issues that I had and 1.5 months in, I can happily report back that I am loving it.
Not only am I loving it, but I have also spent around £10 on makeup in the past £6 weeks, which is genuinely the smallest amount I've ever spent on the stuff in the last 5 years. Crazy. See what has happened is I am so focused on:
A. Using up the products in my bag for the month
B. Testing these products to really get a good idea on how they work and if I'd bother repurchasing
that I have VERY little interest in adding more to my collection. And every single time I am reaching the end of a product, and essentially getting my hard earned money's worth - I get a much bigger thrill of happiness, than I do when it comes to opening new makeup. Which is kinda bizarre for me, but that need to own more, to have the newest thing, to 'treat myself', has now diminished. And whether you're on SM yourself or not, if you are finding yourself in a similar rut of buying fruitlessly - I highly recommend you do something similar.
I think I've gone on for long enough, so I'm going to leave you with my video now:
I talk about the items I selected for my January bag, what I liked, what didn't work and more. I also did a mini demo of each item, because instead of doing a tutorial (which I'm no where near good enough to do imo), I wanted to stick to my roots of blogging and reviewing....and thats why its a longer video that usual!
And no, I'm not claiming to have invented some super unique idea, I'm sure it has been done before! But I just wanted to share with you all, how I've been feeling lately and what has been helping me out. Also this is not to say that I won't be buying more makeup in 2018, of course I will! I'll just have to really really like the product before I pick it up in order to justify it to myself. Here is to saving up more money, for more adventures, rather than just more makeup 🙏🏽
