I wanted to take some time today to talk about something I find harder than it should be, but something that has to happen: throwing DIY stuff away. Be it past-their-prime ingredients, dubiously useable products, mystery bottles, or packaging you swear you’ll be able to safely repurpose someday; some things just need to be chucked as part of this hobby, and sometimes it’s harder to do than we’d like to admit.
If you’ve been following me on YouTube you’ll know I’ve been working hard at purging and de-cluttering to prepare for a move, and it likely won’t come as a surprise that my DIY supplies are the worst/hardest/largest part. While I’ve been through my closet, books, and kitchen multiple times, purging tons and tons of items, my DIY supplies have received almost no attention. Last week I finally got in there a bit—I took a garbage bag into the second kitchen where I store everything, knowing there were most certainly things that needed to be binned, and the time had long since come. You’d probably guess that my ingredients number somewhere between way too many and you have a problem, Marie, and you’d be right. As I went through my dragon-treasure-cave sized stash of ingredients I found an embarrassing number of duplicates (sometimes multiple unopened things… agh!), and enough bottles and tubs of barely touched rancid oils and butters to make me feel really disappointed in myself. What remains is still overwhelming, but at least I’ve got a decent handle on what’s there… and there’s definitely a lot of work left.
Anyhow, as I’ve been going through everything down there, that got me to thinking about things we need to get rid of. There are four main categories of things that need to be binned:
Post Overview
Spoiled, contaminated, or otherwise dodgy ingredients
This category can be really hard to chuck because the ingredients are unused. You feel like you’ve wasted money on the ingredient, and you’re mad at yourself for spending money on something you didn’t use. The ingredient might be spoiled, contaminated, or otherwise dodgy. I find rancid oils and butter are the biggest “thing” in this category. They’re an easy thing to purchase in larger-than-needed quantities because their shelf lives sound so long (1–2 years) when you buy them, and unlike something like a preservative or a carbomer, you do (or can) use it in large amounts in recipes (using up those high-oil-content recipes is often another story). Run through this thought process with a dozen different oils and butters and you’ve got yourself a recipe for wasting a lot of oils and butters.
Quick recap: Rancidity occurs when oils oxidize—this is different from microbial spoilage, like mould and fungus. Rancid oils are easily identified by their characteristic smell, which is reminiscent of old crayons, or a bag of nuts from the back of your pantry that was part of a Christmas basket you got sometime in the 90’s.
It sucks, I get it (I’ve discovered more rancid oils in my cupboard than I care to admit). Rancidity isn’t a super gross kind of spoilage, like mould, and it doesn’t render the ingredient completely useless, so it can be tempting to include the oil in a soap or something so it gets used. But, here’s the thing: if you spend time making stuff with rancid oils and other spoiled ingredients, you are wasting your time, and your time has value (unlike spoiled ingredients). You’re also wasting the other ingredients in the concoction you’re making, as the spoiled one will drag the whole thing down. Depending on what the dodgy ingredient is the recipe may fail, the end product may spoil quickly (or will smell rancid from the very first moment of making), but either way that’s a waste of your time. And, for the super obvious point—you could hurt somebody. This isn’t as likely to happen with rancidity, but many kinds of spoilage are definitely harmful. If you are the kind of person to scrape mould off cheese and still eat it, please do not carry that habit over to your DIY!
Lessons learned: Purchase smaller amounts, and potentially a smaller variety of ingredients as well. If you end up binning lots go things, look at it as a learning experience—you’ve learned you don’t make/use that much, and buying more is likely going to be a waste of money. Also, look into getting that car from the end of Back to the Future that runs on garbage.
Spoiled, contaminated, or otherwise dodgy finished products (also: things you simply do not like)
This one is hard because you’ve already sunk the time and energy into the product, as well as the ingredients and likely some packaging as well. Usually if something is mouldy people have no trouble chucking things (I hope!), but things that are starting to smell a bit off or are just a solid three or four years old and gathering dust should also be binned (side note: please date your concoctions when you make them!). This hobby makes it really easy to fill your home with tins, bottles, and tubs of self-made concoctions, and not only they can quickly fill drawers and clutter up countertops, but they can also rapidly exceed your ability to use them.
It’s easy to keep everything you’ve made (just pop it in the cupboard—easy!), but I’d encourage you to only keep things you’re super excited about and can see yourself using on a nearly daily basis. If you don’t love something immediately out of personal taste (too heavy for your skin, don’t care for the scent, wrong colour for your complexion, etc.), see if you can gift it to somebody who will love it (and use it!) rather than keeping it around your home to take up space and eventually go bad and get thrown away, completely unloved.
As you make, learn about the sorts of things you use lots of. Personally, I use a lot of lotion, lip balm, hand wash, shampoo, and body wash, so I tend to make a lot of these things. “A lot” is a varying term, though. As much as I love lip balm, five tubes will probably last me a year, and when it comes to making, five tubes (or 25g) of lip balm isn’t much. Hand wash, however, vanishes pretty fast—200g might last a month. Lotion also tends to vanish fairly fast. So, I make a choice to make more hand wash and lotion than lip balm.
If whatever you’ve made is utterly wretched, just bin it from the get-go. Don’t try to save it by adding other ingredients (you’re just compounding the waste at this point). Make notes about what you did, what specifically sucked, and any hypothesis about how that suck-dom came to be (too much wax, not enough X, wretched scent blend, etc.).
If you love it, but simply make more stuff than any human can reasonably use (cue me raising my hand bashfully), portion out a small amount for yourself, and see about gifting the rest. If you’re anything like me you get most of the joy from the making, so why not share the joy by gifting the fruits of your labour and knowing they’ll be enjoyed rather than quickly forgotten in favour of your latest concoction and eventually thrown away (likely with a twinge of regret as you liked it but were simply distracted by something newer)?
Lessons learned: Make smaller batches, gift liberally, don’t try to rescue awful things by adding more ingredients, focus most of your making efforts on things that you use often and quickly.
Stuff you can’t identify
We’ve all had this happen. We’ve made something, popped it in a lovely tin, and thought “I don’t need to label this, I’ll remember what it is.” And maybe you do… most of the time. If you’re anything like me you’ve got a lot of different products in a lot of identical tins, and your memory is not going to be winning you a starring role as a Sherlock super villain anytime soon. Oops. That yellowish salve in that tin… is that for the face? Feet? Removing labels from jars? Did you make it for your dog? Who knows.
Or perhaps you like to decant ingredients, or re-packaged something into a new bag when the old one split and didn’t quite get around to labelling the new bag, and now all you’re certain of is that it is… white.
Lessons learned: If you don’t know what something is, please get rid of it. You have no idea how old it is, what’s in it, or what it’s safe for. Use the threat of throwing away perfectly good things to motivate yourself to clearly label everything, all the time, even if you’re sure you’ll remember.
Used packaging that cannot be adequately cleaned
I think every new DIY-er starts hoarding empty bottles and tubes like the apocalypse is rapidly approaching and the currency of the new world order will be empty pump-top containers and old tins. This quickly leads to a sizeable rag-tag collection of old bottles plastered with remnants of old labels and a fine layer of lint adhering tightly to a thin film of remaining adhesive.
While some things can be effectively cleaned and re-purposed (mason jars are a great example), many things cannot. Anything with an intricate pumping/squeezing mechanism can’t be adequately cleaned and must be discarded. If you notice pockmarking, micro-scratches, and other texturing on the inside of the container, chuck it. If it melts in the dishwasher, marvel at its newly mangled form and recycle it. If you think it may have nooks and crannies to trap bits of bacterial and/or never, ever dry out properly—chuck it. Remember that your time has value, and it is more valuable than that $0.80 pump mechanism, so please don’t spend forty minutes trying to clean it and then leave it rambling around on your counter for three weeks while you try to decide what to do with it (recycle it!). Also remember that your concoctions will spoil much faster if they are immediately shacked up with a bunch of bacterial grossness, so then not only are you wasting your time cleaning the fiddle-some packaging, but you are also wasting the time (and ingredients) making the next thing that goes into the package as you have to chuck it days or weeks after making it (not to mention the potential health risks).
Lessons learned: Lots of vintage packaging is strictly decorative, and you’ll be recycling more than you might’ve thought when you first got into DIYing. If you truly want to reduce your use of packaging, look at making things that don’t need it at all.
Love this post; thanks! I also just cleaned out my DIY cabinets and you are so right about it being hard to chuck things!! But also rewarding to have things organized and inventoried. As far as extras, I keep a little basket in my crafting room where I put leftover items that I know I won’t use (lots of lip balm in there!) and I donate it to our local food pantry/community outreach center for their clients. 🙂
I love the donation bin idea! I’ve been donating lots of soaps to the drop in centre, and I’m off to a clothing swap tomorrow where I will be bringing both lip balms and old pants 😛
Oh my! I see myself in this post! Yes, it is so hard to throw things away, especially ingredients! I did a purge not too long ago and it was just sad throwing things away, but I am learning that I don’t need ALL the ingredients all at once. I have a list of new ingredients I want to buy, but am (im)patiently waiting until I use up some of my current ingredients. Great and very timely post, Marie!
I do so wish I didn’t have to learn these lessons the hard and expensive way! I’m sure my wallet and groaning shelves wish the same thing, ha 😛 My biggest thing is now purchasing things in the smallest quantity. If I use that up quickly I am allowed to buy the next size up next time, but for most ingredients there has yet to be a next time, which is rather illuminating 😛
YES! I’m doing this too (buying the smallest size of something)! I, too, try to convince myself that it’s cheaper in the long run to buy the bigger size. Does that work out like I plan? Almost never!!
KonMari makes a good point about that—those big containers are effectively “renting” space in our home, and when we realize that the space they occupy has value (good thing I don’t live in NYC haha), then we really aren’t saving all that much money. I found this interesting article—no data on Calgary, but it is an interesting way to help you see the value of such a small amount of space!
“don’t try to rescue awful things by adding more ingredients” This is so me! I have some soap in the freezer that I used too much charcoal in and I keep thinking that with a small bit of it in subsequent batches, I’ll be able to use it up. No. I really used too much and need to let it go.
I have done this FAR more times than I’d like to remember, and hopefully it can help spare some people (and ingredients!) 😛 Sorry to hear about your soap!
Thank you, Marie.
I too have been hoarding bottles like there is no tomorrow and have deformed plastic bottles as a result on the dishwasher, so, it is reassuring that I’m not the only one to do these things. And, I’ll start buying items in smaller quantities.
The smaller quantity thing has been tough for me (the lure of “cheaper per gram” is very powerful), but thus far seems to be working well; I’ve been getting the small one with the promise that I can buy the bigger one if I use it up quickly, and most of the time it never gets used up at all, let alone quickly.
Great post – as I have the most atrocious memory I do label everything, but that’s about all I do right 🙂
It also makes me want to ask what did you make for Lottie? I make paw butter for Lucy for frozen, salty roads and I keep wondering if I could make her shampoo (that organic Oatmeal stuff costs a fortune)
Thus far I’ve done paw wax and I’m working on a shampoo bar 🙂 From my research into dog’s skin the pH of their shampoos is extremely important, and the bar I’m working on takes that into account 🙂
Ooooh shampoo bar sounds so cool – I shall wait patiently.
I’m planning it for March 🙂
Ooh, that sounds awesome. I’m actually going to be getting a dog sometime in the next few years, and I’ve been trying to figure out what would be a good (truly) all-natural choice for bath products etc. for it (so many “natural” ones have things in them that are toxic to humans, so unless there’s something about dogs that renders them immune to the effects of those toxins, I’d rather avoid them in dog stuff, too).
Did you find Lottie wanting to lick the paw wax off, or no? I know some dogs will just lick Musher’s Secret off their paws, rendering it wasted and useless.
The shampoo bar is up! I find Lottie is interested in licking the paw stuff off my fingers, but doesn’t seem to realize I’ve smeared most of it on her feet LOL.
Thanks for sharing about this! It’s good to know other DIY’ers struggle with this issue. I started making my own skin care products a few years ago (inspired by some of your recipes, now that I think of it – thank you!) so I’m mostly on top of that supply stash because I also learned this lesson with my kitchen pantry and stationary supplies for making greeting cards. Since these are lifelong interests they’re an ongoing battle, though a recent move from BC to AB helped me get rid of a lot of stuff. But seeing your purging tips have me hopeful about keeping these supply stashes manageable. Thanks again for sharing your concoctions! I’ve enjoyed the few that I’ve made and have managed to keep my supply from growing since the minimum order requirements from New Directions and Saffire Blue make me reconsider what I’ll actually use/make. 🙂 Happy DIYing in 2018!
You’re welcome! It’s probably more of a reminder for me than anyone else, haha. STOP BUYING STUFF, MARIE And DEFINITELY stop buying the 1kg size of an ingredient you’ve never tried! I’m getting better, but it takes a while to work through several 1kg tubs of butter by myself haha. Happy making!
A very nice post! And good for a newbie like myself. I’ve tried to only order smallish amounts of stuff since I don’t yet know what I’ll like (the exception being soaping oils, since you use quite a lot even in a 500g batch). I’m actually surprised by how much is left of the ingredients I bought for my your newbie course.
I think a lot of the ease of over-buying for this hobby comes from our perceptions of what “a lot” is coming from food. We can make quick work of a pound of butter, but a pound a mango butter using in lotions at 10% makes for around a gallon of lotion, and that’s a lot of lotion!
I haven’t started throwing anything away but I have been thinking a lot lately about my collection. When I first was getting started, I wanted to buy everything and in large quantities. Looking back there are so many things that I would have never purchased or in much smaller packages. I hate to throw stuff away so I am trying to figure out how I can use some things up more quickly and I spend a lot of time asking myself, what will I repurchase vs just be a chance to free up space for something new? It’s helping that right now, I’m putting together some gift baskets because it giving me new drive and I am finally getting to make things that I would never get around to making just for myself because I still haven’t used up my current batch. I can see where it would be fun to do a small scale business as a way to get to do more but I keep thinking about how what I enjoy is making new things and customizing and a business wouldn’t necessarily support that.
I hear you on the “would have never purchased” thing! That is most of my powdered botanicals :/ They are such pretty colours that they suckered me in, but I’ve found them to be pretty darn useless. Sigh.
My experiences with selling have not been as fun as I’d hoped :/ The making part is extra worry-laden, and I spend a ton of time meticulously applying labels, making the same things over and over again, and filling out government forms. Definitely not a way I’d choose to be able to make more ’cause that’s all it is—making lots more of the same stuff. The playing part that I love doesn’t have a place is producing inventory 🙁 Gifting is definitely the way to go for making more but not using it all!
Wow, Marie, you described me perfectly with the container hoarding….So embarrasing. I have a day off soon that I will use KonMari method to tidy my clothes closet, AND get rid of a bunch of old containers. Thanks for this eye opening post
It’s so easy to do! A big part of this was written as a reminder for me, too 😛
I buy things in fairly small quantities (except things that get used in large quantities in recipes, like some oils), and I go through them until I don’t have any left. As such, all my DIY ingredients together occupy a single shelf in my corner cupboard, and all my containers fit into a single plastic shoebox (mostly what’s in there is the rest of a 50-pack of unused chapstick tubes, and very little else). I need to get some more shea butter, then I can make another batch of soap paste (made a 500g batch back in June and I’m just finishing it up now), which will cut down on the number of things in my cupboard even more.
I would love ideas for what to do with sunflower lecithin, though, because I didn’t end up making the maple syrup chapstick, and I have a full bottle of it (the only size there was).
I’m envious of your tight inventory management! I use lecithin in quite a few things—lots of lip glosses lately. A search for it will get you started 🙂
I have a big compost pile in my garden. I compost whatever I can (such as old herbs) and clean and recycle containers whenever possible. This makes me feel a little better about having to get rid of stuff. Nevertheless, I still find it really hard to throw so much away, and I feel terrible even throwing small quantities away….and oils aren’t the best thing to compost.
I love composting! I’m so thrilled that my city has started up a city-wide compost program that accepts things for composting that would never make it into a personal compost heap, including oils. They actively encourage composting cooking oils (including paper towels soaked in grease), so I have really been enjoying that alternative (and less wasteful) way to dispose of some of my concoctions and rancid oils 🙂
I have some oils and butters that I have had for over a year now. Do you have estimates on the shelf life of say coconut oil, Shea Butter, Rose hip oil, powdered silk peptide, etc.? they are not date stamped and they don’t smell bad yet, but I was just wondering if there is an estimate. Let me know your thoughts. I need to start purging. uuuggghhh
Check with your suppliers for all these things. A year is a fairly typical estimate, but coconut oil typically lasts much longer than something like rose hip oil thanks to the saturated fat content, and I’m still using silk peptides I’ve had for… years… and they seem exactly the same as they did when I got them, ha.
I have the same problem with oils and plant butters going rancid. They are probably my favorite ingredients because of the awesome variety and benefits they have. I store as many as possible in my fridge. Do you think adding some vitamin e oil would extend shelf life? As I usually use e in anhydrous products it might work in the oils as well.
It definitely will! At 0.5% it’ll help extend the shelf lives of your oils, which is awesome 🙂
Hi Marie, I love your blog and have been following you for many years, ordered the book and am a big youtube follower 🙂 thanks for this brilliant work.
I wonder how can one safely throw the unused ingredients? Is it safe to throw them with the rest of the trash? I am unsure what to do with things such as Glyceryl Stearate, Cetyl Alcohol, Zinc Oxide etc. Should I return them to the provider for safety measures? thanks a lot for your advice.
Good question! It’s always a good idea to refer to SDS documentation, which your suppliers should supply. I tend to compost oils and butters, while inorganic things are usually garbage. It is always a good idea to check and make sure there aren’t special instructions, though—these will typically come about for things with very low flash points (cyclomethicone comes to mind) as they can spontaneously combust in the trash.
I love this post, even if I’m late to the party, as usual. I am a self-proclaimed serial crafter. This includes collecting (coughhoardingcough) supplies. I could argue that collecting is just one of my hobbies. Right?
I got the notion to DIY beauty/home-care products in late 2019. I’ve been focused on essential oils with aromatherapy and simple things like insect repellent spray and anti-itch roll-ons for bites. Oh, and the dreaded Dr B Castile soap ideas… So, my collection acquired cocoa, shea, mango, jojoba and kokum butters, as well as a broad selection of carrier oils. Fast forward a year, give or take a few months, and I’ve got a great resource for expanding my beauty alchemy! A few more months and I might be ready to actually start making things. That brings me to this week where I started remembering ingredients I bought way too early in the game. (Pandemic chaos with three kids puts a huge damper on the best DIY intentions! Add in a laid-off spouse and productivity is nothing more than a pipe dream.) Anyway, I opened all my butters and carriers last night and sniffed. Needless to say, there’s now untouched mango, jojoba and kokum butters in the trash. Plus a small (thankfully) bottle of avocado oil. The rest seem to be all right, but I did go into my Amazon account (and others) and marked the purchase date on every remaining package. Those butters only kept about a year. Being in Texas and running the air conditioning at budget temps seems to take them out quicker. I think I’m going to need a dedicated dormitory refrigerator for things like that, plus a vacuum sealer.
In the interest of staying on topic, I won’t go into the purging that my other hobbies are overdue for. Except that, mostly, they don’t spoil with age. 🙂