Imagine this: You wake up, do your morning routine, and have breakfast. You’ve cleaned every part of your apartment except one — your beauty closet. Swallowing the dread, you put on your “Renaissance” playlist and dance your way through a much-needed beauty product-declutter session. You can finally breathe a little easier, until you realize you have a new problem: half these products are untouched and it would simply be wasteful to throw them away.
This feels like a universal problem for any and everyone who has ever referred to themselves as a beauty lover. The best part about cosmetics is that they are a relatively low-cost way to create a feeling of luxury in your everyday routine, but the downside is that products can add up fast — and don’t last forever. Whether you’re a collector of limited-edition packaging or you just need to try every red lipstick on the market, every product has an expiration date, so it doesn’t make sense to hoard them.
Thankfully, there is a solution for your mountain of rejected beauty products in need of a home: donate them. There are a handful of organizations that can collect your new and unused, or gently-used, products and give them to someone in need. From nonprofit organizations backed by L’Oreal Paris’s Women of Worth initiative to organizations that help women dress for interviews, there are many better alternatives to throwing your beauty products into the trash.
Ahead, check out a few places you can donate your beauty products so you can declutter with a clear conscience.