Project Happiness...and my 66 items!

So I was hanging out in the You Tube world again, and came across a suggested link called "Project 10 Pan."  I'm certain I have some sort of mutant gene that causes me to gravitate towards ANYthing that combines a game and lists! lol  If you haven't heard of it before, the idea is to take 10 items from your makeup collection (usually things that you have hardly used but want to rediscover) and then make a concerted effort to 'hit pan,' or use them up entirely.  Hitting pan, is when you've used up the pressed powders enough that the center is bare and you can see the metal pan at the bottom of the container it is in.

So of course You Tube sensed my excitement and continued to suggest more and more related videos for me to watch...which I did!  Then it changed slightly to "project use it up" videos, which are similar but are not necessarily just make up items.  I was intrigued!  Having grown up in a home where being frugal was a day to day life lesson, this hit home with me right away.  You see, we had moved to a much smaller unit over a year ago, but despite my efforts to minimize the items, I had held onto too many of them giving our home a very cluttered feeling.  My main problem was that even when I have cleaned it didn't FEEL clean.  I had tried several things over the last year, each with their own measured success, but still had a ways to go.  THIS project sounded perfect because it appealed to my sensible side which said I shouldn't just get rid of the items, but rather use them up...AND it worked towards a specific goal of getting rid of the clutter and allowing me to have that clean home I desired!

So looking back to October 28th, I eagerly went to my bathroom and gathered all the items that were partially used, and then just left sitting there gathering dust.  There wasn't much thought, I just had a plastic bucket and dropped everything into it.  The exciting part was there was INSTANT GRATIFICATION in that with the items out of the bathroom, I was able to clean up the bathroom, rearrange items in the cupboards and before the project even began, I had the clean bathroom I had been dreaming of for the last year!

I also made a quick trip around the house and gathered some items from my nightstand, bedroom, purses, craft area, etc.  I thought having all of the items in ONE place would be nice, and give me a good visual on just how much excess I had!  I estimated I would have 25 items but to my surprise there were SIXTY SIX!!!  Most of mine were health and beauty related for this project.

1. Charmin wipes
2.  Pampers wipes travel pack
3-4.  Simple face wipes
5-6.  Hair dye refresher packs
7. foot balm stick
8.  cider vinegar
9.  Colgate toothpaste gel that I don't like
10-17 chapsticks!
18.  mini chapblock chapstick
19. lipbalm  chapstick
20.  travel size of last years Christmas handcream
21-22. paper toilet seat covers (no good at home- need them in my purse!)
23. white musk perfume
24. hand gel
25.  body lotion (left over from Christmas basket)
26.  Garnier Fructis sleek and shine
27. degree body spray
28.  herbal essance curl scrunching gel
29. mandarin conditioner
30.  hair detangling spray (used when my hair was twice as long!)
31.  citre shine
32. Nair
33.  Big waves
34.  Paul Mitchell sculpting foam
35.  clean and clear moisturizer
36.  Revelon foundation
37.  Cover Girl foundation
38.  brow pencil
39.  blast lipstick 640 stunner
40.  blast lipstick 825 perky
41.  cover girl powder (green)
42.  Revelon lipstick (stay current)
43.  khol liner in midnight
44.  eye liner
45.  maybelline blush
46-47.  PF concealer green and yellow 
48.  Maybelline dream matte
49.  bare minerals finishing powder
50.  revelon colorstay powder
51.  hello kitty bubble bath
52.  mouth wash
53.  body scrub
54.  baby gel
55. foundation sample
56. box of kleenex
57. victoria secret hand lotion
58-65 face scrub and face wash samples
66. foot works foot lotion

So there is my long list of items... my daughter and sister are participating and keeping me accountable.  I have added that in addition to simply using up the items and getting rid of the clutter, I am not allowed to buy items similar to those I have on the list until the old ones are used up!  It's been just over two weeks and with the basket of beauty items sitting in the bathroom it reminds me to use them up first, as well as a crystal bowl of the makeup items on my desk.  So I can track the packages of used items, I have a cute hello kitty gift bag hanging on a door handle.  I will update those items soon.  So what do you think?  Is this something you want to play along with?  Would this project help you be a little happier? Let me know what you think.


****************************UPDATE NOVEMBER 18th 2013**************************

It has been a couple weeks and I have been actively trying to use up some of the products that are in my original 66.  Some of them by their nature are going to take a lot longer to go through (like the make up ones) and others are pretty straight forward.   I have some empties to share now though to track my progress.

So as you can see I used up a total of 14 products from my list (the two brown bottles in the center are not from the original 66 but were emptied as well) and have 52 remaining!  A couple more are close to being finished buuuuut I wanted to get rid of these to recycling ASAP instead of having them hanging around (one of the main reasons I started this project in the first place.  Have you been playing along?  Did you knock anything off your list this week?

 *************************UPDATED DECEMBER 4TH *******************************

So here are all the empties that I have used since Mid November.  As you may notice some of them are from the original 66 list, but I have also added a few others as well.  The reason for this is I had a lot of hand creams in my original list, and it seemed silly to keep trying to squeeze a little out of each one.  I sat down and mixed them together using a 'recipe' I found on Pinterest months ago.  I walked around and found still MORE near empty hand creams, and was almost done the coconut oil, so I tossed it in there as well!  I will have a short post about the hand cream later today.  I'm still plugging away at my original list...I am going to make a MUCH shorter list next time I do this!!!  lol