I first posted my makeup inventory analysis last March but there have been a lot of changes in my collection since then which served as an excuse for me to spend a day playing with Tableau. For the most part, I’ll follow last year’s template to go through this but if you have any other ideas on how to make this more insightful, please let me know. I’m definitely into analytics and updating this inventory definitely helped me get a better overview of my collection and pinpoint some problem areas.
I’ve given a summary of my makeup preferences in my last makeup inventory and most of it is still relevant so feel free to check that out. In terms of what has changed, I was quite good in keeping with my project pan for the first half of last year but then abandoned most of my products and actually for the first time in years found myself very inspired by new lip and eye product releases. Towards the end of the year, I also rarely wore foundation and mascara.
I’ve had an overhaul of my project pan last month and rolled in quite a few products so for the time being, I am challenging myself to wear makeup everyday compared to the usual five days a week. This definitely wasn’t the case for most of last month but I’ve turned to makeup as a bit of a safe haven again and I’ve been enjoying putting it on every morning without rushing. It’s not always a full face and I miss my office mainly because with all my coffee drinking I could get quite a few lipstick reapplications in every day but I think if I can keep up, I can hopefully still cycle through products in my collection. I haven’t bought any new makeup since my shopping spree earlier in the year as I like to see colours in person especially for new makeup releases. Good luck trying to keep this up! There are also definitely some quite old makeup products in my collection and while I am still happy with their performance, I feel like they need to be out of my collection very soon.
The table above looks worryingly different compared to last year. Last year I said how 2018 was a big year for makeup purchases but 2019 was a huge year for complexion products. I pretty much spent what I spent for the whole of previous year on just complexion products. Now to be fair at the beginning of last year, I had nothing in my inventory for concealer and foundation and then my shopping got a bit out of hand but still I’ll have to spend quite a while working my way through all of it. I purchased 8 concealers, 5 foundations and 4 bronzers. I also don’t use foundation every time I use makeup so that will be a tough category to get back down. Not to even mention the fact there are still products in these three categories that I’m keen to try!
Now to go into more category detail. Overall, my lip category number has slightly increased but I have also finished quite a few lip products last year and I won’t be buying any lipsticks for a while so I am not too worried about this category. In terms of eye products, I did add a couple of eye singles and quads into my collection and eyeshadows take a lot longer to use up than lipsticks but eye makeup is also my favourite part so I don’t really mind the size of this category at the moment. I would still like to focus on some of my older shadows throughout the year but I will be happy as long as I can hit pan on them and not add too much in. As forementioned, my real problem now is the face category. I definitely feel like I have way too much in most of the categories: foundation (5), concealer (9), blush (7/9), bronzer (8/10) and highlighter (5). In terms of the blushes, bronzers and highlighters, I like all of the products I own with the exceptions of 2x Glossier Cloud Paints and 2x Fenty Match Stix which I’m not a huge fan of. Most of the powders are not old and with the exception of two blushers that I’ll be focusing on, I’ll just try to rotate everything else regularly and see where we stand next year but I definitely don’t want to add to this category this year. Foundation and concealer is where I struggle quite a bit because it will take me forever to get through these but I’m also really keen to add to this (Pat McGrath is definitely calling my name finally). I don’t know anyone that these would match so I don’t really have much choice either. Even though I have more concealers, I’m confident I can finish most of them eventually but I often forget to put on foundation and when I do, I use the tiniest amount. I would love to add the Pat McGrath Skin Fetish to my collection after having tried it last year because it is quite literally the most beautiful foundation I’ve ever tried on my skin but I want to get at least two foundations out of my collections first and that will not be easy!
Going through my brand breakdown, I have also purchased products from brands I’ve never tried before last year so this graph has also changed quite a bit. Most of these brands, I only purchased one or two products from but Fenty has been a brand that has become quite prominent in my collection. My top leading brands continue to be Nars, Mac and Chanel and I’ve added new brands to all three of them even though I thought my number would start decreasing but I actually found they continued to bring out new launches that excited me.
To sum up, I currently have 121 products in my collection and my goal is to have this down to 95 by end of the year. Realistically, they might be makeup launches that I will fall head over heals in love so I’m willing to give myself a 5 product leeway but I never wanted my collection to go over 100 and it clearly did so I’m determined to focus on keeping it down now. In terms of long term goals, at the moment 75 would be a number I’d be happy with and I think it’d still give a lot of variety in the eye and lip category while only keeping favourites in the face category.
If you were interested in creating your own makeup inventory, here’s a bit of summary of how I put mine together. I keep an Excel sheet with all over my products split by brand, category, type, year purchased, price, weight etc. I have a column for inactive (used up/decluttered) items but keep those in the spreadsheet. I create all the diagrams on Tableau and also keep a few Pivot tables in my spreadsheet to quickly see the state of my collection especially when I add new items.
Do you keep a makeup inventory? What are your goals for your current makeup collection?
The diagrams can be viewed in more detail and downloaded on Tableau.
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