It’s of course ridiculous to say that I ‘survived’ a month without buying any make-up, perfume or skincare products: lots of people need to make do without stuff that is immeasurably more important than this. But one needs catchy headlines, no? And in the world of lifestyle blogging, this is a legitimate issue, as blogging tends to encourage irrational spending of frightening amounts of money on beauty products.

Until recently, I didn’t fully realise how true this was. I thought that as I never meant to keep up with all the launches and only rarely do straightforward reviews, I would be more-or-less immune to this. Hah, such hubris. The thing is that if I want to recommend something (and sometimes I do), I feel that I need to make absolutely sure the product in question is worthy. But what about this new one from X/Y/Z? Maybe it’s much better? I need to make sure, before I recommend anything! All the research I do for the blog is tempting in itself – it makes me aware of so many potentially great products. The more products you are aware of, the more chance that you’ll find something appealing. It’s math.

The truth is you can never keep up, of course. Even people who do this for a living and only focus on very specific areas, cannot keep up. It’s not even the question of time and money, at least not only, it’s a question of skin time. Testing stuff properly, especially testing skincare, takes a lot of time.

Despite knowing this, I still try. And that’s why it’s good for people like me to occasionally take a break and not buy anything. It is quite funny and a bit scary to see how used I am to buying things. A couple of times I almost broke my promise simply because of absentmindedness – I almost didn’t notice I was going to get something that violated the rules. But in the end, I managed quite easily, and probably for four reasons:

1. The Timing: January is one of the easiest times to do something like this. One has likely bought and received quite a few beauty-related Christmas presents and might even feel a bit sick of all this spending and product porn. One might also be relatively broke. Also, it was only four weeks. I’m sure two months would have been more difficult, although I haven’t fallen into buying-frenzy as yet.

2. The Backdoor: I do much better in situations like this if I don’t make it an all-or-nothing issue. I tell myself that if I really, really want something and it absolutely cannot wait a few weeks, I should just go ahead and buy it. If I cannot live without it, I should have it. As soon as I frame it like this, I relax and in most cases, don’t feel the need to purchase it right away. Or ever. The same approach works pretty well for me if I’m trying not to drink or put sugar in my coffee.

3. The Stash: If you already have lots of stuff, it makes it easier not to buy more. Partly, the reason is purely practical: if you only have one cleanser, you need to buy a new one when this runs out. When you have 15 cleansers, you don’t. The other thing is that if your stash is as big as mine (but I believe this goes even for people who own much less product than I do), you always own things you’ve forgotten about. Mostly, these are actually pretty, good quality things – you bought them, after all. Going through your own reservoirs helps to deal with the craving for something new.

4. The Planning: On one hand, all this research is dangerous – as I said, knowing that beautiful stuff exists makes you want to own it. On the other hand, I enjoy planning about what I’m going to buy almost as much as actually buying. Sometimes, I suspect, I enjoy it more. I make long and elaborate lists of everything I could potentially need, I curate perfect vacation skincare selections, I plan my spring make-up bag. Often, after spending days on planning, I find that the itch is scratched and I don’t actually need any of it. Or some of it, at least. I’m sure all this imaginary shopping sounds perfectly unhealthy for many people, but at the moment, for me, it makes sense.

Did I learn anything from this exercise? Will I spend differently in the future, thanks to this January? Will I spend and consume less? Possibly. I’m definitely more conscious of my patterns of behaviour and really feel like considering my purchases more carefully. But this might be just a phase I’m going through, followed by an orgy of spending. We’ll see. The best thing about this January, though? I finished quite a few of my products (including the Zelens ones on the picture) and for a compulsive hunter of the new, this is a very satisfying feeling.