Collective Haul - Oops, How Did That Happen?

This year I've been feeling increasingly uncomfortable with consumerism for consumerism's sake - there's a level of greed in parts of the beauty world that disturbs and - yes, I'll just say it - disgusts me. Nothing is ever enough sometimes, and when the freebies come out, the seagulls swoop. I'm not saying everyone's like that - I'm just saying I've seen enough of it to find it offputting. I've always had a lot of makeup, but for most of my makeup life, I was 'on my own' so there was a limit to what I knew about, and therefore a limit to what I bought. Since I've discovered beauty blogs and YouTube tutorials and the US dollar's dropped enough to make it far more worthwhile to shop online from overseas than instore here, I've found that my cosmetic (makeup, skincare, perfume) collection has grown to ridiculous proportions and is more than I can possibly use up in the rest of my lifetime. It makes me feel a bit sick, actually.

Therefore, I've attempted not to shop much this year and have been trying to reduce my collection (I hate that word but I can't think of a better one - I didn't set out to 'collect' makeup). If you asked me what beauty products I'd bought in the last six months I'd answer off the top of my head, "Nothing, really." However, I was thinking about it this morning and pulled out everything I could think of that's been a purchase in that time. That's the picture above. Hardly 'nothing, really'. Having said that, it's not even a quarter of what I would normally purchase in any given six month period over the last, say, five years, and it doesn't count things that have been given to me, either for review or by friends who bought things and didn't like them. So, while that may not look like much, it's:
a) nothing I need
b) nothing I don't already have a dozen variations of

But there it is, anyway, so I may as well go ahead and show you what I've bought in the past six months in the 'nothing, really' category...

L'Oreal Youth Code Serum, Night Cream, and Day Lotion. I was sent some of the Youth Code Day Cream, Concentrate and Eye Cream a while back to review and I really liked the products (aside from the eye cream, which I wasn't too jazzed about). I saw these on sale somewhere (Priceline, maybe?) for about $22 each - normally they're about $40 each - so I bought them. I've had them for a couple of months and just started using them last week. I'll do a proper review when I've used them for a while, but so far: like the serum, love the night cream, not keen on the day lotion.

I flat out refuse to buy anything from the Sleek website (or review any of their products), and if you care to know why you can read all about it here. However, they do come out with some annoyingly cool stuff, so I can't bring myself to boycott the line entirely - luckily everything is easily available on eBay. I had begun to collect all of their eye shadow palettes and got to 9 or so before realising that many of them I would never, ever use. I sold about half of them in a blog sale and kept the ones I really loved and would definitely use. I've since only looked at buying ones I thought I'd use rather than just buying for the sake of it, and Oh So Special is the first one I've picked up for ages - probably the first one this year. It has a lot of wearable colours in it, and I think it's really pretty in a low key way.

Cherry Culture 20% off sales are perfect for those times when you have something in particular you want to try, because they happen frequently enough that you can get a bargain without having to wait months. In this case, I wanted to try the NYX Matte Lipsticks after seeing them... somewhere. I can't remember now. However, to make the postage worthwhile I needed to throw in a couple of other things so I thought I'd have a crack at one of the newest Milani blushes, and I bought two NYX eyeshadows (Smokie Mountain and Volcano) because I'd seen swatches of them somewhere and thought they looked really nice.

Like Cherry Culture, Nonpareil has a lot of sales, and also the advantage of carrying the Wet'n'Wild line. I wanted the limited edition eyeshadow trio The Gilded Age (third from the left), and again had to throw in some extras to make the shipping worthwhile. Note that not one of these products has been opened, and I bought these about three months ago. Yep, totally needed all that...

I picked this up on Strawberrynet when I was stocking up on shampoo for Noodles and myself. Reason? I've seen the Pixiwoo girls use it a lot and their word is good enough for me. I don't need a concealer - I have loads of them.

I've bought quite a bit from Haus of Gloi in the last couple of years, but I'd never tried their body lotions, and it seems like EVERYONE has been talking about them lately. They've just exploded on to everyone's radar in the past few months, so all the talk finally tempted me in to giving those body products a go. I wasn't super fussed about what scents I bought - I really was more interested in formulations - though in hindsight I wish I'd gone for scents I had matching perfumes for so I could have layered. These are all minis - I buy their mini scrubs occasionally because I like to use them on my hands.

Solstice Scents has always been on my radar but I've never bought anything from them before. From memory I think their website used to be really busy and annoying and I went there a couple of times and then couldn't be bothered trying to navigate through everything (for the record, if that is the case they have updated it, and I may be imagining all this anyway). Then a few weeks ago someone (can't remember who for the life of me) did a review of some of their perfumes and I was really taken by the sound of one called Manor, so I did a tiny order of three samples (you get one free). I haven't really tested any of them yet as I have hay fever which is really messing with my perfume-wearing capacity, but I've sniffed them all in the vials and they smell beautiful. I will definitely review them as soon as I am able to.

Right, so that's everything, though I am sure I've forgotten about some impulse buy that is stashed away somewhere and forgotten. I also have some lip balms on the way from Etsy (legitimate purchase - I need lip balms and I don't like supermarket ones).

My goal between now and Christmas (which is less than three months away - eek!) is to buy nothing that isn't 100% necessary. So let's see how that goes.