Lipsticks. I love them. I love shimmer, I love matte, I love cremes. I like how they feel going on, I like how they gradually fade over the course of the day (or hour, in some cases!). Lipsticks are my weakness.

If I count correctly, there are forty-six lipsticks pictured. After this, I remembered another half-dozen or so in various purses, so let’s say I have about fifty shades. Bright pinks are my favourite. They pack a colour punch, but seem less intimidating than a rich red. Though I do have a number of reds as well. Also, of those I’ve never used but that I love, love, love: MAC Heroine. It’s beautiful and purple and the day I tried it on after buying it, it was very clearly too dark for my skin. One day, I’ll wear it anyway, but until that day I will just admire it in the tube.

My other weakness? Nailpolish.

I’m not going to count these because I neither WANT nor NEED to, but the box I keep them in is about 1 foot long by 6 inches wide. IT DOESN’T MATTER.

What’s nice about nailpolish is your nails never have a bad hair day, or a fat day. They’re sometimes short, if you bite them like me, but they’re always there. Even short, you can rock a gorgeous silver chrome. Great nailpolish can turn my day around. Most of my collection is newish, within the last year, but a few have been around for ages. My favourites you can see clearly in this picture: the Color Club holos – their holographicyness is fantastic, Revlon Whimsical, the coral from Julep. New additions would be Lippman’s Happy Birthday and Candy Shop. They’re beyond fabulous.

Julep Maven has definitely contributed to my nail polish collection. Their polishes are really great, but pricey.

What else do I have a lot of? Brushes, face creams, hair stuff, body cream. I seldom use lotion, unless I have time and remember, so it takes me a really long time to get through a bottle. Then I get more in the subscription boxes, or I get gifts of bath stuff. I pruned out some of these I knew I’d never finish: The Calgon lotion, the Avon cellulite cream from the 90s, pretty sure, the Healing Garden lavendar scented lotion. What I’m left with is far more manageable.

Hair stuff. Obviously, I colour my hair, but that stuff lives in a different closet, so this is my .. day-to-day hair products. Treatments, sprays, shampoos and conditioners, styling products, and of course, pink brushes and combs.

I love, love love love the Moroccan Oil products. The shampoo and conditioner, styling products, oil itself, all of it. My hair is superfine and it doesn’t weigh it down. It smells a bit like.. manly men, but it’s something I like, so I look past that. My ICE conditioner keeps my ends from getting ‘too’ green, and tops up the ginger very nicely. I wish I didn’t have to use it as often as I do, but red is a tough colour to maintain, so them’s the breaks.

That’s it, really, that’s my medicine cabinet. Notice the lack of medicine? Me too.

I’ve started making an effort to really use all this junk. Hopefully by December I’ll have a much smaller collection. And maybe I should get rid of another box subscription? We’ll see!