My lip gloss died its natural death–Product Expiry and ways to spot it!

You adore your cosmetics, you love to keep them safely, and sometimes the love and caring is so much so that you just keep collecting makeup and never use it! Well if that sounds like your story then you must read on.

Today morning I took out a lip gloss I hadn’t used for a while and thought to myself – such a lovely color and its just lying around like this, let me put it on today. There was nothing strange in the smell or texture to warn me that it might have expired. Since it had been lying around for almost a year the label and all was gone. So I put it on and came to work. After about half an hour or so when I was talking to a colleague I noticed an unusual dryness on the inside of my lips. I drank some water but the weird dryness just continued. Somehow my attention went to the gloss I had on and I went and wiped it off. Had some more water and noticed that very soon that weird dryness had vanished. That is when it struck me that my gloss had probably expired.

Any makeup, skin care or hair care product that you have comes with a shelf life. Most cosmetics have enough quantity to last beyond that shelf life if not used on a daily basis. As a result we end up with tons of things sitting in our closets that we rarely use but still love whenever we do use them. Hence it becomes important to know whether the product is still alive and kicking or has died its natural death.

Some quick signs of expired products are foul smell, sticky consistency of an otherwise non-sticky product, separation of the liquid contents, or a sudden non skin friendly reaction that you might have noticed on using the product after a long time.

Below are some suggestions that I have in mind and am thinking of following to keep a check on the product’s expiry.

1. If you know the expiry date of the product try and organize your makeup based on expiry date so that you know which products to use and finish off first.

Organize things so that products nearing expiry are used first

2. Try and keep the original bar code section intact. Most product packaging does contain a barcode but the product itself does not. So when you buy the product use the following link to check the expiry date. http://checkcosmetic.net/ this site caters to a large number of brands and is helpful in checking the expiry. 

To check expiry you will need to enter the numbers given below the white and black strips - this is the bar code number. These days there are applications available in the android market which can also scan bar codes and tell you the product brand and expiry.

3. If the original product does not come with the expiry printed on the product itself (like lipsticks) then use tiny stickers and write the month/year of expiry on it and put it on the product itself. Packaging is mostly thrown out so it becomes useless for tracking expiry.

Month and Year of Expiry stuck on the bottom of the jar

4. If you still have products that don’t have the expiry (either originally printed or added by you with stickers) then keep checking the product for any foul odor – this is the first sign of expiry specially for lipsticks and glosses.

Expired gloss will start smelling funny

5. For skin care products like lotions if you see the lotion change its consistency or you see the oil/water separate out – that is your sign for discarding the product.

6. Compact powders and other powder products may not show signs of expiry but they can, if used beyond shelf life, cause breakouts or other allergic reactions – for these it becomes even more important to note down expiry.

Expired compact powder can cause breakouts

7. Nail paints can cause nail bed infections (I have gone through this and trust me it is one painful thing you need to avoid at any cost!) It is important to 
        a) Stay away from cheap brands where ingredients are not known at all and it is not easy to contact the company and 
        b) make sure the nail paint is not expired.Along with this it is important to maintain a good hygiene with your make-up and skin care products as well. This makes sure that your favorites always remain favorites and never cause you any problems at all.

Hope you found this information useful. Always remember that your favourite product if expired, can result in allergies, dermatitis, infections, bouts of acne and other problems which will cause a lot of pain and agony. So check your closet today and throw out all expired products before its too late!

If you have any other tips that can help us all then please do share through your valued comments!

PS: Images are taken from various sources on the internet. If you own any of  the images then and would like me to take them off drop me a mail @ shilpagandotra@yahoo.co.uk and I will take them down immediately.