Tuesday 21 May 2013

How long can your beauty products live?

If I could put a limit on the shelf life to my beauty products, I wish they would never go out of date!

Ever wondered about how long does a beauty product last for?  In today's post, I want to draw your attention to this very important topic!

I've picked out a handful of beauty products from my collection and have a closer look into each of them.



As you can see there are base products, lip and nail products, cream and powder blush, eye shadows, mascaras and some skincare products.

As a general rule of thumb, you want to turn to the back of your products, then you will find an 'open cap' symbol in which you will find it says something like 12M or 30M, like so.....



This basically means this product can be kept up to 12 months or 30 months.  In this instance, my Bourjois Healthy Mix Serum Foundation can be kept up to a year's time and my Rimmel Stay Matte Pressed Powder can be kept for a longer time, over 2 years.  

Sometimes, this symbol is not printed at the back of a product but at the bottom part of the product, like this one for my Chanel Vitalumiere Foundation....




I notice that an average shelf life for base products range between 12 months to 2 years and beyond, which is quite handy as it often takes AGES to finish a new foundation.

I have to be honest though, before I wrote this post, it never occurred to me that there is a shelf life for nail colours.  How silly I was, of course everything has an expiry date!  Two of my nail polishes will last between 24 months to 36 months - great news this means I will have plenty of time to spend with them!



I always thought that mascaras have the shortest life expectancy of 6 months amongst all the beauty products - I was only half right.  Take a look at two of the mascaras that I have:



The Rimmel Lash Accelerator Endless mascara has a 12 month shelf life whereas my Collection Extreme Coloured Lengthening Mascara has what I thought a 6 months shelf life.  I took another look of another of my mascara, the Max Factor Clump Defy mascara it also has a 6 month shelf life.  They vary - the key is to take a look at these when you buy them.  I'm pleased about the findings because I really love my Rimmel Lash Accelerator and for it to have a 12 month shelf life means that I won't need to rush through using it but hopefully the content won't dry up before I use them up!

Next up is a range of eye and face products include: Soap & Glory Lid Stuff and Love at First Sight Cheek Powder, Bourjois Cream Blush:


These all have a rather long shelf life from 18 months, all the way to 36 months.  Haha this means buying blushers continue to be a likely act for me, apart from my obsession of cheek products, it means that they are to be kept for longer before I need to use them up!  Keep buying!!

Then I had a look at my lip product, too and I picked up the Revlon Superlustrous lipgloss.  Unfortunately it has the smallest printing one can read properly.  Basically it says '18m' at the bottom of the bullet - can you read?


Finally, let's round these all up to have a look at the shelf life for some skincare products including hand cream, cleansing milk, etc.



There is again a range of duration occurs here, from as short as 6 months (cleansing milk) to all the way to 24 months (exfoliator).

There isn't a fixed answer for how long you can keep each product for but looking across the above specimens, it can be as short lived as 6 months to a staggering 36 months.  However, I must remind you that whilst you enjoy using them, it is also important that you keep them in a dry and cool place so that bacteria cannot grow.  Especially for mascaras, every time when you take the wand out from the tube, you are introducing bacteria to it so it's best to avoid 'pumping' your wand back into the tube unnecessarily.  It's your eyelashes you are dealing with, they are delicate and surely you don't want to get an infection as a result.

I hope that you have a better idea of shelf life of beauty products, perhaps it's time to go through your beauty collection and have a clear out?

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