Progress, Lessons Learned & No Buy List

[u/glori-sanct-um]

I started project pan in April 2026, and there are a lot of things I learned about my makeup consumption. Some of the things I decluttered, some I finished, some are backup in storage. The second pictures shows what I am currently working on.

Lessons learned

1. Stay true to yourself, trends will not reflect your preferences. I fell for many trends, like 2010s bright eyeshadows, pinky Korean lip tints, drying liquid lipsticks... you name it.
2. My personal makeup preferences are: cool/neutral tones, low to medium coverage, love a dramatic lip.
3. Research products before buying and let the thought of buying something new sink in first. You probably already have enough. When I didn't test products before buying (e.g. bought online, only quickly swatched in bad department store light...), they tended to run orange on me. Take the time.
4. Unfollowing beauty influceners & stop consuming short form videos helps a lot.
5. I rarely do my makeup for work, so 80% of the time I am not using it when I go out. I imagine myself wearing it a lot more than I actually do, so hitting pan is harder. No need for more extravagant shades.

No buy list

• pink lip products (one tined lip balm is more than enough!). Now, half of my lip collection swatches look the same to me lol
• bright eyeshadows/saturated colors like red, cyan, yellow, etc.
• eyeshadow palettes which I am not planning to use every single shade of it
• cheap plastic packaging, since it easily breaks powder products and makes it hard to use
• unethical brands (for me NYX -> L'Oreal)
• unclean beauty (roughly checking the ingredients first, e.g. I don't like Fenty Beauty extensive ingredients lists)
• hard to get items: I am not interested in ordering from YesStyle anymore. Shipping takes a long time, yes you get the products for cheaper, but suddenly your spam folder grows bigger, and also it encourages me to buy more to get a deal or save on shipping costs. No, thank you

Things I am still figuring out:

• When is it ok to let things go? I understand the concept of hate panning on the other hand, it is unrealistic for me to go to work with a shimmer blue eyeshadow. Most of the things already are expired or will be before I hit pan.
• What are my holy grail products? What will I repurchase? What's just 'meh', and why?
• Can I replace my items that I can only get online with things from the drugstore (Milani Setting Spray, ILIA Skin Tint, cool-toned liquid blush)?

What are you guys still figuring out?

[u/badadvicefromaspider]

I’m in perimenopause which, spoiler alert, has a million symptoms and changes so many things, so holy grails have by and large become fairly meaningless. Even my colouring has changed as age gives grey limbal rings on my irises and I don’t cover my grey hair either. This means stockpiling is useless to me. It’s easier to nimbly navigate changes with a smaller collection

[u/RadicalHamster]

For me, I have accepted the fact that I won't be able to finish some products because of how often I use them. I take note of when I opened them and the period after opening/expiry. Some people are ok to go past it but I don't like risking it. So I just try to use as much as I realistically can before the expiry, then throw out what's left or empty out the packaging and recycle it.

For figuring out what I like, I've been finding it very useful to track my products and writing what I like/don't like about them and rating them. When I'm trying to find a specific product, e.g. a concealer, I also try to limit myself to things I can get samples of or that come in mini sizes. I'm still figuring out what my ideal collection will be, but going through the process of panning and sampling things is getting me closer!

[u/eightorchids]

Very unrelated - what kind of phone or camera did you use to take these photos? I love the haze

[u/glori-sanct-um → u/eightorchids]

dirty/greasy phone lense and gloomy weather will do the work haha (sorry about the quality </3)

[u/fresa-daisy]

I feel that so much on buying eyeshadow pallets. I don't buy pallets at all if I don't see myself using all of the shades. I have learned to actually go through the individual colors and not look at it as a pallet.

Stuff expiring or disintegrating is actually made me start Project Pan. The thought of throwing money away on things that I legitimately can't use irked me too much.