If you think your cosmetics stash gets dirty with day-to-day use at home, try taking it on the road full time. Shifting itineraries, changing product deadlines and unpredictable bathroom layouts all combine to throw your beauty product maintenance routine out the window. Following are a few ways to deal with basic makeup bag maintenance while moving full steam ahead with a life of permanent adventure.
Sanitizing: Keeping your makeup bag neat and clean isn't just a matter of aesthetics. There are health concerns as well. It's no secret that bacteria can grow on the surfaces of cosmetics, and are easily transferred during application. Keeping up with your cleaning schedule for application brushes, beauty blenders and compact cases can be a bit challenging in vacation rental and hotel bathrooms which are notoriously short on counter space. This is typically one of the largest barriers to keeping up with the task. Placing a towel on the coffee table as a drying surface is a help, as there's usually enough room to spread out and get the job done.
Basic makeup brushes can be swished by hand in a simple soap and water solution, while compacts and the surfaces of the pressed products they contain can be cleaned and spritzed with rubbing alcohol. It's a product that does double duty for medical needs, and is available in most pharmacies around the world. Alcohol wipes work well for containers of liquid products, and can also be used to sanitize your disposable razor and makeup pencil sharpener between uses. Other helpful items for maintaining your makeup bag include cotton swabs for reaching more difficult places, and a nail brush for scrubbing things like your glass nail file or teasing comb.
Putting clean tools and sanitized product compacts back into a zippered bag full of fallout from broken pressed powders and dirt that has filtered in from a dusty ride on a rural bus route completely defeats the purpose of incorporating the sanitizing of beauty products into your travel routine. Take the time to clean it properly as well. If the place you are staying provides access to a washing machine, this can be as simple as dumping any loose matter into the trash and tossing it in the laundry with a load of towels. If not, you may need to press your nail brush back into service along with soap and water to get the job done.
Consumption: Balancing the consumption of your products to stay ahead of expiration dates is a delicate act. Carefully curating a basic capsule collection that's more minimalist in nature is a helpful strategy. When all you carry are cosmetics you use daily, containers get emptied quickly and are much less likely to go bad before you can use a particular product in its entirety.
That said, certain items can dry up and get gummy quickly if you are spending a great deal of time in dry airplane environments or traveling in more extreme climates. Two of the biggest culprits in my makeup bag are mascara and nail polish. Even reapplying them both frequently, carrying only one nail color, and using my waterproof mascara as a paint-on eyeliner to maximize consumption, I still to need to constantly keep a frosty eye on the consistency of both. By far, they are the two items I replace most often due to unavoidable deterioration.
Availability: It's all well and good to plan a restock, but you may not always know when you'll be able to access your favorite brands again. I've gone on record before about the perks of bonding with brands which are more international in order to have predictable access to them during an extended adventure abroad. While I stand by that philosophy, even major cities will have variations in what you might consider basic product availability. For example, while my Urban Decay Naked Basics eye shadow palette is still going strong for the most part, I used the last bit of one of the base colors about a week ago.
The brand is one I haven't seen available here in Morocco. Since I don't want to switch over to a new collection until the majority of the other shades have been consumed, I filled in with a single from The Body Shop in a comparable color. I was actually able to score it for free, since I was stocking up on their Instablur primer during a buy-two-get-one-free product sale. Searching out this option took a bit of research however, and taught me a valuable lesson. Creating a familiarity and comfort zone with multiple brands before you leave home will help you roll with the punches more easily from the road.
Storage: Check periodically to see how your makeup bag itself is holding up. The last thing you need is to have it give out at a critical time, spilling expensive products on the concrete floor of the train station while searching for your lipstick. While my $1 zippered pencil pouch is still performing, I do put it through some serious abuse. The zipper maybe has another month left to go. Still, it's been my main storage product since late last summer before our house in Florida sold. A full year of use is more than my money's worth, and it would probably have gone much further under normal travel conditions, as opposed to the extreme and permanent stress I'm putting it through.
Also, you don't want to store your makeup bag in a luggage spot where it will get smashed or crunched. This can be just as dangerous for costly products as a bag with a faulty zipper or weak seam.
Storing it between clothing layers after wrapping it in your camping towel or sarong is one protective measure you can take. Keeping it in the padded section of your computer bag is another.
