Just a few years ago my daily beauty routine was what you would call 'high-maintenance' and my bathroom was covered with sprays, bottles, jars, stacks of make up palettes and countless half-used shower gels and body lotions.

But even though I definitely wore a lot of make up and skin care products (way more than I do now), I still probably only used about 5% of all that stuff on a regular basis. The rest were things I had bought on a whim, because I liked the packaging or the scent or because I had once again bought right into whatever clever sales strategy a marketing team had come up with.

I now cringe when I think about not only how much money I wasted during that time, but also how much mental energy. Every day I would get stressed out at the sight of my jam-packed bathroom, I always had to plan in an extra 10 minutes just to dig through the mountains of pencils, pots and lipstick tubes in my make up bag, and packing for trips was a complete nightmare.

But eventually, as I got into minimalism and overhauled my wardrobe, my approach to beauty changed and I slowly started to pay more attention to what I was buying, why I was buying it and how it would fit into my daily routine. Nowadays, I own a relatively small set of beauty products, but I am much, much happier with it. My routine is simpler and shorter, yes, but it’s also much more personalised, tailored to my personal style, effective (=skin care) and time efficient, because it fits right into my everyday routine.

In this post I’ll show you the exact step-by-step process I used to overhaul my routine at that time and still follow whenever I feel my bathroom cabinets are getting a little too cluttered for my liking. To give you a concrete example of the entire process, below each step you’ll also find the answers of Julia, a lovely reader who lives in Berlin like I do :)

An important point before we get started: Although the focus of this post is to simplify and de-clutter, it’s not about ‘blind reduction’, i.e. getting rid of as many products or steps as you can. Your goal is not to build a routine that’s as short as possible, but that’s as functional as possible and optimally tailored to your individual needs and objectives.

Getting Started

Choose one area of your beauty routine to focus on:

MAKE UP

SKIN CARE

HAIR CARE/STYLING

BODY CARE

You can repeat the steps below for each of these, but for the first round choose whichever area you feel needs the most work and has the biggest impact on your everyday life. Julia completed the process for skin care.

Step 1: Analyse your needs

As a first step, write a list of every product type you use on a regular basis, e.g. foundation, hair spray, shower gel, and so on, and tie it to specific times of the day or week if you can. The trick is to do this completely from the top of your head, without looking though your bathroom or make up bag. That will help you separate steps and products you actually need and find useful from those that you are only using because they are there.

In your head, walk through a typical day of yours to identify when and what kind of products you need, including touch ups. Also write down any products you use regularly but less than once a day, like skin or hair treatments, special occasion make up (feel free to include different colour options if you use them regularly) and stuff like shaving gel, etc. If you want to change up your routine a little and include a new product type that you aren't currently using, include that too. Here is Julia's list:

EXAMPLE