Maple Tree: The Three R’s of Using Up Products

The Three R’s of Using Up Products, or How Not To Be a Dragon

I love buying and trying new products, who doesn’t?! One of the joys is discovering a new HG product which works magic on your skin. But there is also a terrible danger lurking there by doing this.

I’m talking about hauls. Adoredee has written up this great post on hauling responsibly. (Read Here) But let’s face it, we all sometimes succumb to the temptation of the sales and end up with more products than we know what to do with! I find this particularly with sheet masks, I must own over 50 but I can’t stop getting excited by new designs/brands.

Meh is what I use for products which don’t break me out, but don’t seem to do much else either. They’re boring, they’re taking up valuable routine space but I can’t really afford to throw them down the drain. In an ideal world I’d be able to travel back in time and shake some sense into the naïve hopeful younger me, stopping myself from clicking that buy button. Sadly I don’t possess time travelling powers. *fingers crossed for scientific progress*!

Until then I’m left with my cupboard of products, both meh and untried. I end up hoarding them away in boxes, neglecting them and building up a collection that’ll never see the light of day.
But there are ways to get excitement out of even the most boring products. So don’t be a beauty dragon and hoard the meh products away! Utilise the Three R’s!

1. Re-Gift
“One man’s waste is another man’s treasure”

It’s an accepted cliché in Skincare/Beauty but YMMV. This may be your meh product, but another’s holy grail! When I have too many of one type of product, or tried something out and wasn’t impressed I look to my friends to see if they want to try something new out. This is especially good for when I treat myself to a subscription purchase and there’s something in there not for me. I get to treat my friends as well, share the AB love.
There’s also the reddit R/AsianBeautyExchange, where you can sell/swap decants or lightly used products.

2. Repurpose
“When one door closes another re-opens”
Sometimes a product doesn’t work for your face, but this doesn’t mean you have to stop using it! One of my favourite products is the Shiseido Perfect Whip Cleanser, meant for the face, but after I discovered it’s high pH I repurposed it for my legs as a shaving cream! My legs have never felt so smooth, and the number of ingrown hairs is significantly less. (Full Review Here)

Below are some other ideas for repurposing products:

Aloe is good as a hair oil! Tame the frizz
Oil cleansers become shaving oils
Foam Cleansers become Shaving Cream
Face Stuff becomes Body Stuff, e.g. Essences, Ampoules, Moisturisers
High pH cleansers for Brush Cleaning
Décolletages are important too! Rub that essence there
Anything Snail for scars, bug bites and ingrown hairs
Cleansing oil for your hands to get rid of strong food smells, e.g. onion and garlic
Actives for the body! Tackle ingrown hairs and bacne

These are just a few of the great ideas for repurposing your products.

3. Reuse
“Waste not, want not”
Now this is my most boring but sensible piece of advice, suck it up. If it’s not breaking you out, you can’t repurpose or regift then you’re just going to have to slog your way through the product. I’ve come to accept that not every product in my routine MUST be a HG, otherwise my skin will descend into blotchy dull limbo, that’s just not true. Sadly I don’t have a dragon’s hoard of gold to dip into, so I have to accept mediocrity in my skincare routine sometimes in order to ensure I have food on the table.

It’s been my new year resolution this year to be more fiscally responsible! And these are the top tips I came up with when it came to my skincare/beauty product spending, which since my discovery of Asian Beauty has rocketed. It’s been great for my skin, but not so much for my wallet.