My Skin Care & Makeup Organization + How to Tell if Products are Expired

Well hello there! One question I get asked a lot is how I stay so organized as a self-professed beauty junkie. In today’s post (with a video!), I’m sharing my skin care and makeup organization system, plus easy tips on how to tell if your products are expired.

You can see me walk through my bathroom cabinets and drawers in the video here, but I explain everything in more detail below.

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Watch The Video

Choose Your Products Wisely

While I love my skin care and makeup products, I am also super type-A and need things in my home to have their own space. Every time I feel like I’m running out of space, I do a whole skin care and makeup organization overhaul.

When I’m testing new products, if it doesn’t work for me it immediately does not go back into my cabinet or drawers. That rule itself has helped me keep a lot of extra random products out of the way.

I also like to take everything out of my space and throw it all onto my floor so I can see everything, Marie Kondo style.

This gives me the chance to see all of my skin care and makeup organization bins, clean them, and then later decided which products go in which bin. (More on that below.)

Throw Out Expired Products

As you’re cleaning, make sure you’re tossing expired products. Here are a few easy tips to know if a product is expired:

• Over the counter items such as SPF and acne treatments are required by the FDA to have an actual expiration date on them. These can usually be found on the crimp of a tube or on the bottom of a jar.
• Other skin care and makeup products have a Period After Opening label; it’s that little graphic of a jar with its lid and a number followed by the letter M (ex. 12M). This gives you the estimate of a product’s lifespan once you open it.
• Use your common sense(s). If something used to be white and it’s now yellow; if something is clumpier than it used to be; or if something smells off… toss it.
• If you can’t remember the last time you used a skin care or makeup product, let it go.

While using expired products generally won’t harm you, it’s still not a good idea to keep using them. For skin care products, you’re not really getting the full benefits from the ingredients due to deterioration in efficacy. For makeup, bacteria can build up over time inside containers – only for you to then put that on your face.

How I Organize my Skin Care

Since I don’t have a shallow medicine cabinet and use the deep space under my sink, I have a lot of clear bins. These obviously helps with organizing but since they’re clear I can see everything, too.

I have a single, larger bin where my everyday products live. These are my go-to skin care items that I use for my morning and nighttime routines. Keep what you reach for the most in front so you won’t constantly knock over your other stuff. It’s annoying. Trust me.

Further back in my cabinet, I have “row two” of products that I use once or twice a week. This space is then broken up by face masks and then other treatments (peel pads, resurfacing treatments, etc.).

All the way in the back is back stock of products, random bath salts for refilling my apothecary jar, and electronic devices/chargers I don’t reach for too often.

The one exception to my “put what you use the most in front rule” is my little bin in front for the tiny guys. And that’s solely because finding a small vial amongst tall cleansers is rough. After lots of months of rummaging through and messing my bins to find a tiny serum, I eventually separated out all of my small items into their own bin.

I repeated this method on the other side of my cabinet for hair products. What I use the most goes in front, what I use the least goes in the back.

Makeup Organization

For my “everyday face” products, I keep those in a makeup bag, separate from my other products (not pictured). Similarly to my daily skin care products , I keep these items all together so that I can get to them easily and quickly.

For everything else, my makeup organization is split up between two drawers. I use this shallow, sectioned tray with removable slots to separate product categories. Then, I store my larger palettes vertically and slide them into the side of the tray. Anything that can store vertically should go that way; it saves so much space.

For long items like lipgloss and eye pencils, I store them in pencil cups! Don’t just look in the bathroom section of stores; I use anything that fits in my space regardless of the room!

My second drawer holds lipsticks and less exciting things like contacts, makeup brush cleaner, and some extra makeup back stock. This makeup organizer is actually for hair products, but works well for my lipsticks because the center portion is larger so I put them all there.

Finally, I keep all of my makeup brushes in this cute brush cup under my cabinet. I like storing them in a cup because I feel like they can get more air this way, and they’re not rubbing up against surfaces or the inside of a dirty makeup bag.