Beauty

[Oshare-girl]

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@geezerette wrote:

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@just bee wrote:

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@BExplorer wrote:

Apparently @MacDUFF 's thread about curating her closet in Fashion (and, of course, this ongoing one) was just what I needed to inspire me to go through my closet and get rid of what I do not love as those items just don't get worn. I now have 2 large shopping bags stuffed and ready to go to Goodwill. It's nice to actually have a little room in my closet. 😄

I recently purged my bra/undie drawer after I had my first bra fitting (about 30 years late 😳) and discovered my bras were 2 cup sizes too small--yikes (yes, feel free to laugh at what a dunce I am)! What a difference the right sized bra makes! 😅

So, you know what happened after the bra and undie (yes, undies too, since they matched the bras) purge, right?  I had to start over which was not cheap.  I was kicking myself for buying so many of the wrong sized bras and kept thinking about all the money invested in them.  So I am vowing to not get my new collection up to 20 again.  I think 6 is a good number.  

More confessions-- I have bought a lot these past few weeks:  Bras (which were necessary), undies, WEN, and Skinn.  I also bought some clothes but I am okay with those purchases because I hate clothes shopping and was long overdue for some things I actually needed and I took advantage of some great Columbus Day sales.  

I love over to read everyone's successes on this thread.  And the struggles assure me that I'm not alone.  

@just bee I loved your Balloon Festival pics!  

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@BExplorer

I just read that thread and it's familiar territory.  I recommend a trip to Fashion to review others' posts.

I went ahead and posted what I've always felt was the thing that kept me from the big purge:

The problem for many of us is that we continue to buy for lives we've never had and never will.  I think what's hard about parting with our collections is that we have to admit that these imaginary lives are just that.

@just bee

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No truer words.  I still buy clothes for a lifestyle I don’t live and cosmetics/skin care for a body I don’t have.

Then, when I don’t use them or they don’t change me into the person I have fantasized I am, I toss them out.  And I swear I’m never going to do that again.  But sure as shootin’, before long I’m on to another fantasy.

Oh to have the time, energy and money back that I have wasted on these fruitless pursuits.  

Pretty much sounds like like every other addict I’ve ever heard...😯

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Ah yes, the Fantasy Self that we supply food, clothes, makeup, books, etc for.  Wish we could add Fantasy Self as a dependent on our taxes.  I spent enough on her that she should be a real tax deduction.

[Oshare-girl]

Outgoing October is going pretty good.  I have become less attached to my stash.  It's been over a year since my foray into "green" beauty.  I'm going to be decluttering 2 cream blushes (albeit mini sizes) that are from green brands that I bought a year ago.  I really haven't used them much.  It's just so much easier for me to use powder blushes so I'm letting the cream ones go.  They have less preservatives too so they are not in any condition to be used on skin now.  

I finally resigned to the fact that the bareMinerals Complexion Rescue is not appropriate for my skin.  I bought it when drugstore.com & beauty.com were having their going out of business sale.  It was pretty much half priced by that point.  Did I need it?  Nooo...  I think I was trying to bundle it with another product and justified the purchase somehow.  I've tried using it off and on for a year and have had enough.  

I finished a bunch of green beauty skincare too because I knew they were geriatric in terms of the green beauty world.

This made me excited.  I hit pan on 2 shadows in my Tartelette Tease palette!  The other 4 shadows have barely a dent in them but these two make my heart sing.  At the end of the year this palette will be decluttered.  I. Will. Not. Buy. Eyeshadow. For. The. Rest. Of. This. Year.  That's where I went wrong last year.  I bought 3 small palettes during the last quarter of the year.  All my hard work went down the drain.  Will not be making that same mistake again.  Also, no more buying lip products for the rest of the year.

Next month is going to be "Never-going-back November" for me.  I don't ever want to be in the same situation again with so much excess.  I need to keep reminding myself of this when the big holiday sales come up next month.  

[just bee]

[just bee]

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@kitty45 wrote:

Another reason I've cut down on buying clothes etc is that the quality isn't there anymore.  It doesn't matter how much you spend.  After a few washes the clothes start to look old.

I did buy some Serious Skin Care peptide.  I sometimes use their Vit C & Ponds but I ran out of & I've been looking ragged lately so I decided to try something else.  

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@kitty45

I've noticed that most of the clothes don't even look that good when they're in the store.  Everything looks cheap but the prices are ridiculous.  I must be getting old because I'm saying exactly what my mother said whenever there was a new trend.  She'd look at something and say: "That's not new.  We were wearing that in the '40s."  Now I'm looking at fashion and saying pretty much the same thing.

I was channel-surfing the other night and stopped to watch a few minutes of Beaches.  What a horror of a film.  (Sorry to offend any fans, but this was truly awful.)  Anyway, I've been trying to figure out the whole "cold shoulder" trend (why do I want a turtleneck sweater that has no fabric on the shoulders?), and I noticed Better Midler was wearing a similar look in the film.  Some bold print top with no shoulders.  This was 1988.  Looked bad then, looks bad now.

Long, thin knit sweaters looked bad in the '70s and they look bad now.  I look at people and wonder why they want to wear my junior high wardrobe.  Remember lace-up sweaters?  They're baaaa-ack.

But my brother wore lace-up jackets in the '60s because Michael Landon probably wore one on Bonanza.

Everything old is new again.

Speaking of which, I ran into someone I've known for ages but I haven't seen her in a few years.  She looks great!  I'm talking transformation.  Which made me think that I'm looking a little ragged myself.

I'm taking a few days off from work.  I'm getting irritable.

(Obviously!)

[just bee]

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@Caffeina wrote:

I recently donated two sets of king size fleece sheets, because they take up too much space.

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@Caffeina

Careful!  Old sheets might just be something you want to hold on to.  It sounds like people are having trouble finding quality sheets these days.

I'll be finding out soon because sheets are one thing we actually need.  Next we'll be looking for towels that don't feel like sandpaper.

What's with all the cr@ppy materials?  Makes me think of my mother again.  She'd be in the stores feeling the fabric and grimace.  One word and she'd walk away: "Ersatz."

OMG!  The whole world is ersatz!

[just bee]

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@Oshare-girl wrote:

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Ah yes, the Fantasy Self that we supply food, clothes, makeup, books, etc for.  Wish we could add Fantasy Self as a dependent on our taxes.  I spent enough on her that she should be a real tax deduction.

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@Oshare-girl

Books!  I want to know why Fantasy Self collected so many unreadable books!

I was looking at my bookshelves in just one room the other day and I don't even recognize some of these titles.  I know I collected a lot of oddball items when I worked in a bookstore, but then I just kept collecting more.

And how many books on George Sand does a person need?  Same with Sherlock Holmes.  How did I get so many Holmes collections?  And to have more than one copy of the same book...  what the ...?

I need to pull some of these dusty titles off the shelves and bid them a fond adieu.

[just bee]

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@Oshare-girl wrote:

Next month is going to be "Never-going-back November" for me.  I don't ever want to be in the same situation again with so much excess.  I need to keep reminding myself of this when the big holiday sales come up next month.  

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@Oshare-girl

I'm totally smitten with this idea.  Has a nice ring to it.

[just bee]

So I've been posting old Far Side favorites on a thread in Among Friends and then realized that the border collie at the sheep party came from a 2007 Far Side calendar.  This is when I had to think about what I was doing ten years ago and what I'm doing today.

Well, what I'm doing today is cleaning up a mess in the kitchen.  I woke up around two AM and wandered out into the kitchen for a beer after I heard the score for the final Cubs game of the season.  (I didn't watch because I wanted to give the Cubs a chance to win.  They didn't.)

Better-half was cooking.  He had fish in the oven and next thing I know he's taking the fish out of the oven and it slips.  All the fishy liquid in the pan was dispersed over the counter, the items on the counter, the fabric on the kitchen stool, the floor... everywhere.

I didn't realize it was all over the floor, so as I'm walking around cleaning up as much as I can I noticed that I'm sliding.  And I've walked through fishiness and spread it to nearby carpeting.

The dog is watching all this and is slowly wagging his tail.

So this is how my birthday begins.  Looking ragged, feeling irritable, knowing the Cubs have been destroyed by the Dodgers ("GET A HAIRCUT!!!  BUTTON YOUR JERSEY!!!  KEEP YOUR #@$%&*^ TONGUE IN YOUR MOUTH!!!"), and cleaning up fish mess.

It's going to be a sterling year.

[kitty45]

Speaking of sheets.  My mom gave me two sets about 20 years ago & I bought one set at Sears around the same time, I still have the sheets.  A couple of years ago I decide why not buy one of these fancy sheets with a million thread counts, well my dog destroyed it with his nails the very first time I put them on the bed.  I keep it to cover my plants when the weather is cold.  He hasn't been able to destroy my old ones.  So yeah, keep your old sheets.  

[just bee]

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@kitty45 wrote:

Speaking of sheets.  My mom gave me two sets about 20 years ago & I bought one set at Sears around the same time, I still have the sheets.  A couple of years ago I decide why not buy one of these fancy sheets with a million thread counts, well my dog destroyed it with his nails the very first time I put them on the bed.  I keep it to cover my plants when the weather is cold.  He hasn't been able to destroy my old ones.  So yeah, keep your old sheets.  

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@kitty45

Speaking of dogs and sheets...

The sheets I moved out here with are like cast iron.  I used them in the 80s and the dog has inherited them.  They've been washed a million times and they still hold up.

Better-half and I were just talking about this the other day.  What's the deal in America?  Every new store popping up in this city is a mattress store.  How many mattresses does a person need in a lifetime?  And what's with all the pillows and sheets?  My pillow, your pillow, our pillow, their pillow.  Everybody's got a pillow. 

And then there's the sheet that Presidents sleep on.  Who cares?  I just want a sheet that fits the bed, doesn't feel like cr@p and survives the wash cycle.

No wonder nobody in this country is getting a good night's sleep!  They're lying in bed wondering why they spent so much money on mattresses, pillows and sheets!

Dang, I'm grumpy.