Austerity August: My No-Buy Goal

Hello my beauties! Have you heard of a No-Buy period? I sure have, and the words are usually terrifying to my shopaholic ears! However, I recently organized my makeup collection (yet again), and the size of it made me proud, but also made me realize I should probably take a break from adding to it for a while. Not only will it help ease some pain on my storage capacity, but it will also help ease some pain on my wallet!

This is going to be hard, I'm not going to lie. I love buying makeup! We all need a bit of retail therapy sometimes, and for me, buying makeup is the best kind. There's something magical about the possibilities that a new, unopened product provides. It's kind of like the thrill I get from a blank sheet of paper, full of untapped potential. Maybe this is the product that puts all others to shame, I think every time, maybe this will be my holy grail of makeup.


However, no matter how much I love buying and trying makeup, there's definitely truth to the "too much of a good thing" adage. As I sat in my living room last week organizing, with all of my makeup strewn around me, I realized that I practically have my own small beauty supply store. Here's just a part of my collection during the clean up:

Quite the beautiful mess! I had no place to sit because it took up the entire couch. Rest assured, I use all of these beauty items at some point in my rotation, as my routine changes daily based on how I am feeling. I'm also one of those weirdos who keeps their makeup in the original boxes (I love cute packaging!). All of these products are well loved, but I realized that I am way overdue for a "shop your stash" period.

At work, my boss puts a lot of emphasis on setting big personal goals for yourself and working to achieve them. So I think that a no-buy for the rest of the month would be a difficult challenge, but a worthy goal to accomplish. I've broken the challenge down to the following rules:

1) For the remainder of August, now known as Austerity August, I will not spend any money on unnecessary beauty products. The definition of unnecessary would be any item that is not rebuying an empty product that I use regularly (i.e. face wash, shampoo, etc).

2) Using a gift card does not count. I have one $15 Ulta gift card that I reserve the right to use if I deem it necessary.

3) I will post at least once a week with a progress update so that I am accountable to you all, my lovely readers.

4) I will make a conscious effort to shop my stash and use the products I already own.

If you'd like to follow along and do a beauty no-buy of your own, let me know about it! I'll be tweeting and instagramming all month with the hashtag #AusterityAugust, follow me using the buttons on the right and join the chat!

Wish me luck!!