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Beauty Hacks & Tips

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This legacy post has been given a facelift. Content has been edited for flow and some updates have been added, but the essence is the same!

After comparing my list to so many top hits from Google from silly magazines, I’m confident that MOST of these are not cookie-cutter tips. So many of these, “beauty hacks,” are old hat to me just because I’ve been doing them so long – but it’s come to my attention that some of them are apparently, “sneaky beauty hacks.” I figured, “Why not share?” We’re all trying to streamline our life and make time for other things – even as someone who enjoys beauty, that doesn’t mean I have an hour or two to throw at it on a daily basis – in fact, writing that made me laugh.

Let’s get on with it!

Before I had highlights!

Hair Hacks

  • Maximize efficacy of your dry shampoo. It will absorb oils as you sleep so you aren’t in such a rush in the morning. As much as I love dry shampoo, sometimes I want it to do what it does faster than it does. Solution? Use your dry shampoo at night before you go to sleep. I like Batiste and Psssst!  [2022 update: Skip conventional dry shampoos; many of them are being found to contain cancer-causing benzene. Use tapioca starch instead!]
  • If you buy large bottles of shampoo and conditioner (such as Tresemme’s 39oz monstrosities [2022 update: Screw Tresemme, they repeatedly sell and resell formulas that lead to hair loss]) and transfer them to smaller bottles, you will be pleased to learn that the caps for Dawn dish soap fit on a lot of bottles that take pumps. Pumps aren’t the best for transferring thick product to other containers, but swapping one of those caps makes life a LOT easier. (2018 Update: These bottle couplers are nice too if you need to combine contents a lot – but I still use Dawn caps for all sorts of things. Reduce, reuse, recycle, save money etc.)

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Wands for Wildlife

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Wands for WildlifeA wee opossum helped by Wands for Wildlife

What happens with your mascara wands when you finish a tube?

If you’re anything like I was they usually end up in the trash. Cosmetics packaging isn’t readily recyclable due to the blend of plastics and other materials. Occasionally TerraCycle has a campaign that allows for recycling of otherwise-uncommonly recyclable cosmetics packaging; right now, they’re partnered with Garnier to offer no cost recycling for those tough-to-recycle beauty and personal care items. Pretty cool!

Recycling = Good; Reusing = Better

I now keep a bin of cleaned out packaging to send off to TerraCycle. While it’s great to recycle when you can, you’ll have a greater impact to the environment if you can reuse. After all, an item in its original form without engaging the additional resources needed to turn Item A into new Item B is more resource- and environment-friendly. For me, this means cleaning and keeping mascara wands I like to use with formulas I prefer. I’m picky, though, and a lot of them are still cast out.

For the environmentally inclined among you: What if I told you that you could save your wands and send them off to help woodland critters?!

Wands for Wildlife

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Ultamate Rewards – New Reward Tier

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I don’t know if there was a promotional communiqué regarding the new reward tier available at Ulta but I saw it mentioned in an e-mail last month.

Previously, their base tier was open to everyone and included point earning (redeemable for $ off), a free birthday gift, and double points during your birth month.

Platinum

If you spent $400 in a year, you’d achieve Platinum. For the 2018 reward year, however, Ulta has increased that threshhold by fifty bucks to $450.

New Reward Tier – Diamond

The new reward tier is unlocked with a $1200 annual spend with Ulta. That exceeds Sephora’s VIB Rouge tier by $200 per year.

At first, I thought their new credit card may accelerate that achievement, but since the tiers are based on dollars-spent, not points-earned, it doesn’t seem like it will.

Diamond Perks

Perks new or exclusive to the Diamond tier include:

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The KonMari Method Komono – Makeup – Part 1

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Do you have too much makeup? I’ve been feeling like I do. Last month, I shared my excitement at Lisa Eldridge sharing some No Buy sentiments. I’ve been feeling a bit like I want less stuff. I’m not entirely sure how to describe it. I’m not aiming to be minimalist, anti-consumerist, or no-waste. All of those concepts feel extreme to me and I’m more of a moderation kind of gal. In short, I just want to pare down and be more thoughtful about the things-in this case, products-I bring into my home. As it is, I have too much stuff and a lot of that stuff is stuff I never use or is just OK and I use it because I have it, but wouldn’t miss it.

In particular, I feel like I have too much in the way of beauty products. It’s funny when you’re getting into a new hobby and you just need to try all the things to figure out what suits your features, abilities, lifestyle, and so forth. So I accumulated a lot. Less than people I know in real life, and certainly less than the vloggers and wannabe MUAs who have entire rooms of their home dedicated to their collections. But this isn’t a game of comparison; I had certainly accumulated more than I needed, and more than I would use in a reasonable amount of time.

The KonMari Method

A while I ago, I sipped the delicious kool-aid Marie Kondo (she is getting a Netflix show – isn’t that crazy? I’m kind of concerned about production making it weird though, like so many things are) was serving up. Although I haven’t executed the KonMari method on my home (will probably start with my office, honestly), I appreciate and incorporate some of the principles and thinking into how to treat bringing items into my home.

Makeup and beauty products fall solidly under KonMari category four, Komono (miscellaneous), to be addressed after clothing, books, documents & papers. It is such a broad category that she suggests dividing it into (at least!) ten subcategories, one of which is makeup.

I needed to come up with additional storage solutions. I bought a few sets of MUJI drawers (which seriously are wonderful and do spark joy on their own). In reality, though, if I wouldn’t have irresponsibly allowed my collection to expand, I wouldn’t have needed to spend more to store it. I’m not beating myself up about it; a lot of the ‘stuff expansion’ was a result of exploration. But I know what kinds of products I like, now. I’m more in touch with what I like, and what sparks joy in a product or tool, to responsibly bring it into my home with an expectation that I will use it and love it.

When it Doesn’t Spark Joy

Over time, I feel like the more makeup I accumulated, the less affected I was by how awesome it is. I found myself having less fun than I used to. Sadly, the overwhelming amount of stuff I had wasn’t inspiring me and I started seeing it as more of a chore than something fun.

I destashed to friends and family, I sold items on /r/MakeupExchange, I tossed expired things, I donated some items.

That actually helped a LOT! Since I’ve done that, I’ve been feeling better – but not as good as I could be.  So, (being a rebel and totally going out of the prescribed order; sorry Kondo-san) I resolved to give my collection the KonMari treatment.

To Be Continued

I’ve put it on the calendar for a weekend and April. I’ll report back with my results by May.

Bi-Weekly WTF :: Vol 7 – Beauty Community Toxicity

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Unless you’re truly a hermit, you’re probably a member of a handful of communities. Maybe it’s your neighborhood, your kid’s school, or a hobby you have. Unfortunately, as communities grow, the risk for toxic behavior increases. Either infighting starts or bad apples from the outside wriggle their way in and start causing discord. Some, like the gaming community or some political groups, are more apparent than others.

The Toxicity is Unbelievably Disheartening

In the beauty community, it is largely passive-aggressive, catty bullshit that, theoretically, most people in the community should be old enough to have moved beyond having time for. Then, occasionally, you have outsiders decide to bring their own baggage and horrible behavior along with them.

Now, Twitter is a microcosm all on its own – but I saw this account of such nastiness in January and was just flabbergasted:

toxicity

The thing of it is that I’ve seen toxic commentary like this in response to makeup looks or videos. It isn’t just one girl’s account; it is indicative of beauty community toxicity, and perhaps societal toxicity as a whole. Don’t believe me? Check out some of the hateful vitriol on Guru Gossip. Ladies, it is possible to be critical and skeptical of a content creator without being so nasty.

WTF

I don’t have a ton to say other than it is disappointing as hell that some people out there just have to be miserable over makeup. To me, makeup and beauty should be fun, expressive, and lighthearted. If you’ve spent any time in the beauty community in the past few years though, you know it is anything but. It seems to me that if a topic brings you so much angst that you need to threaten violence over fake freckles, you need to step back and reevaluate your life.

Invisalign Update: Tray 34/36 & Refinement Trays Soon

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Invisalign Update - 34/36 - Refinement Trays

Suddenly, nearly nine months have passed. For about two months, now, my upper teeth have been very nearly straight. Not perfect, but such a night-and-day difference from my starting point that they may as well be. Throughout the process, my confidence in my teeth has grown even though they’re a work in progress. I don’t hide my teeth when I smile now – it’s pretty weird! Good weird. :) After the trays I started earlier this week, I have two more left. On April 3, I return to my orthodontist and will almost certainly be rescanned with the iTero Element to establish a a course of refinement trays. This probably means I’ll be hanging out in my 36th tray for a while!

What are Refinement Trays?

If the initial course of trays didn’t quite get everything where it needs to be further correction is required. Usually, new impressions or a new scan is taken, then new refinement trays are fabricated. The refinement trays are the same type of thing as the original course and may or may not include the same number of attachments or other ‘tools’ to advance the plot of straightening your teeth.

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