How To Organize Your Hair Products And Take Inventory

Product junkie is a word that’s often tossed around in the hair community. It’s jokingly something we use to refer to those of us who can’t seem to refrain from purchasing all the products. You know the ones. A brand comes out with a new conditioner, and they feel compelled to purchase the new conditioner and every other product the brand has ever produced.

The reasons given to justify this type of buying are endless. There are different levels of product junkie behavior. Some earn their title by drip buying. That’s when you purchase the conditioner Monday. Then on Wednesday at lunch, you go back to the store and buy the shampoo. Friday comes and you make another trip to pick up the leave-in.

In the interim, none of the prior purchases have even been used yet. The struggle is so real. Everyone knows that it’s a problem and that there are better ways to purchase products that you will actually use and that your hair will actually benefit from.

It’s wasteful to be a product junkie. So let’s try to get real and deal with things reasonably. Organizing what your currently have is a great start. When you organize, you can see what you have in your stash.  It will also force you to actually look at each product. It’s similar to when you count out cash to pay for that $1200.00 purse as opposed to swiping and not thinking about it until the invoice arrives in the mail.

Some quick pros of organizing are that you avoid double buying; you rotate products so your hair doesn’t become unresponsive; and you’re more likely to use products prior to their expiration dates.

How many times have you made a purchase only to get home and 2 weeks later discover that you already had the exact same product in your collection. It’s a sickening feeling because you know now have to double up and be sure to use all of both bottles. Plus, you could’ve bought something completely different with that money.

When your products are all in view, you will be able to see clearly what’s there and you can choose products that you may otherwise overlook. This will keep your products from becoming stale and you can switch it up so that your hair doesn’t become too used to a product and stop behaving the way you’d like.

To all you junkies out there, understand that hair products do expire. Buying and hoarding is an excellent way to waste your money on a product that ends its assigned days here on Earth by rotting away in your bathroom cabinet. Organizing products from oldest to newest will help you avoid this issue.

So, just how do you organize your hair products so that you can begin to take advantage of all the positives listed above? The outline below should get you off to the right start.

Take all the products you own out from wherever they’re stored and wash the bottles and containers off. Set them all on the floor and clear out the space where they will be stored.

From there you can organize them by product type. Then within each product type, further break them down and separate them by expiration date.

Now you’re ready to implement your system. Whichever system you choose, make sure it’s practical for you and make sure it’s something you will be likely to keep up with. You don’t want to end up doing this exercise every few weeks. Once every 3 months should suffice.

You can choose to store your products in containers of bins. To keep costs down, hit up your local Dollar Store and pick up as many bins as you need. Keeping things simple by buying all one color will help things look nice. A nice aesthetic setup will encourage you to keep things organized and looking nice.

If you want, you can skip the storage containers altogether. Place your hair products where they will be housed in sections. For instance, you can place all your moisturizers in a row. The next row can be filled with shampoos. The next, conditioners, and so on. Just remember to place the items that will expire first at the front of the row so that you reach for and use them first.

Don’t feel like this has to be a monumental task. Mark out a date on your calendar when you know you don’t have any other pressing priorities. Take a Saturday morning, turn on some great music and get it done.

Taking into consideration your trip to the store and the cleaning of the bottles, this entire process shouldn’t take more than a couple hours. You will feel much better when it’s done and more likely than not, you won’t need to buy any new hair products for a while.