What I’m relegated to at the drug store, and minimalism versus beauty blogging

For the past 4 or 5years I’ve been enamored with the idea of creating a minimal yet beautifully curated life. Simplicity and quality resonate, while clutter, excess, and waste drive me nuts. This has extended to beauty and self care in general – I don’t like to have to much product around, and want to fully use, enjoy, and appreciate everything I have.

Enter the dual desire to communicate my passion for natural beauty products with this broader community of people online. As I’ve started making YouTube videos, I find that I don’t want to continually use the same products over and over, I want to have some variety and be able to speak knowledgeably about comparing and contrasting brands and products. I mean, that’s the whole point isn’t it?

So, while I don’t think I’ll ever have (nor would ever desire to have) the massive beauty collections of some of YouTube beauty big dogs, I think I need to have more than just one base and one concealer in my collection. Part of it too is that I research the hell out of products before I buy them most of the time, and think pretty hard before I throw down money for things, which inevitably means I accumulate less than the average beauty junkie.

Creating an even, flawless, dewey base has been my obsession over the past year, so I’ve been focused on foundations and concealers of late. I went into CVS to pick up the Nude Glow highlighting pen I’ve heard good things about so I could use it in a video I’m going to film in a little while, and it was buy one get one Physician’s Formula product 50% off. I hemmed and hawed for a bit but decided to pick up a powder blush, since I don’t have any in my drawer, save for 3 Chanel Jous Contrastes (swoonies). I opted for the “Warm” happy blush, and am going to use this along with the highlighting pen in my next video.

Even though I can’t seem to give up some of my NARS and MAC lipsticks, I can’t bring myself to buy most drug store brands knowing how chemical-laden the products are, and how unethical their testing standards are as well. I know the higher end brands are really no better, and once I use them up I’d be unlikely to repurchase, I think.