Clutter and my make-up box

I was throwing things away earlier today, and I realized how much I've changed in the past 10 years. I used to find so much joy in buying things and bringing them home, and now I think it's awesome when I find something I can throw/give away.

When I was dating J, I really struggled with the shopping aspect of our relationship. We loved finding things on sale, which meant shopping more, which meant both buying and then giving things to Goodwill. A lot of girls would kill for a boyfriend who wants to go shopping with them and give them fashion advice, and at first I really enjoyed being pushed to be fashionable. For once in my life, I had all the right shoes and jackets for different occasions! But eventually I started resenting the superficial and commercial aspect of it. He was unhappy with my weight(which has been relatively stable for the past 10 years, so he was the only one unhappy with it), and we both were spending ridiculous amounts of money - money that he as a student shouldn't have had, and me knowing better shouldn't have spent. I remembered too well the days of my bio-lab dishwasher salary and living off of 20k pre-tax easily, and I was burning through my engineering salary. It didn't make any sense at all. (I am really lucky that I've always contributed at least 10% to a 401k, so at least I saved some money out of the 3 years we dated.) In any case, by the time the relationship ended, I was Done with shopping. I still enjoy finding cute things and buying them when necessary, but I don't ever want it to be the way I spend quality time in a relationship again. And I really don't want to be pushed to be more girly ever again.

I love that growing older has giving me this understanding of relationships. Sometimes you can enjoy someone, but need to go in different directions with your lives. Of course, I didn't know that was what was happening with J, I just knew I was unhappy.

One of the things that I immediately connected with C over was the lack of Things in our lives. I really liked the fact that he was not emotionally attached to Stuff, and didn't own much. He is a bit of the polar opposite of J in that sense, and I find it much easier to live with. As my dad says, "You can't have two spenders." (Aside: I hate grammar rules regarding punctuation, parenthesis, and especially addressing cards because it's outdated. Mr. and Mrs. John Smith? Bite me. Why does the female lose her name?) I worry so much less about us combining our finances than I used to with J, because I know and trust C's spending habits. There are none, and necessary items come from a drugstore/Amazon. It's awesome, and I've tried to adopt a similar mentality. I'll never be as austere as C, and my kitchen breaks all of the rules, but for the past two years I've been a saver and not a spender.

Today I was reading Unclutterer and found an article on how often you should throw away make-up, mostly because bacteria grows in it. I didn't want to read the time limits they listed, because I knew everything I had was over the limit. And when I look through my big red make-up box, I like seeing the pretty colors and shades in it. Even though I rarely wear anything inside it, my make-up box makes me feel feminine. Besides C and various emotional tendencies, my make-up box is the only other thing in my life that does this. I've known make-up goes bad since I was 16, and today was the first time I was ready to act on that knowledge.

So I took out the big red box, and pulled out everything that I haven't worn in years, and played dress-up with it. For the record, 5+ year old lip gloss and lipstick taste really f-ing foul. But green eyeshadow is still fun. And wow, I can't believe my friend bought me that Chanel make-up so long ago, with it's fancy velvet pouches and shiny compacts. And then there was that MAC kick I went on...this stuff is expensive!

And then I threw it all away.