In the fall I made a startling discovery, I had over FIFTY different lipsticks, lip stains, lip glosses, balms and more. FIFTY. FIFTY! To be sure, many of these were gift with purchases, from beauty boxes or unopened, but some were simply trendy shadres merely forgotten. Trendy lipsticks shades come and go but they stay in our makeup drawers for eternity. Hence, I decided to try a bit of a challenge to pick the lipsticks I would purge this April.

I chose 32 lipsticks, stains, balms and glosses. I left out any that were clear or mostly clear (lightly tinted balms, or mostly clear glosses, anything that wouldn't be very noticable), and those I received recently, and divided them in four makeup bags with eight products each. I made sure each bag had a variety of colours - dark red, classic/blue-toned red red, light pink, fuschia/purple, neutrals, corals, glosses, etc. I then asked my boyfriend to pick which bag I would start my week with.

Here are the rules.

• April has 30 days, there are 32 lip products to choose from
• I need to wear this product for several hours, hopefully OUTSIDE
• I don't need to neccessarily wear it all day long but I can't wear any other colour that day.
• I need to photograph/Instagram each shade
• Each bag has eight products, so I basically get two vetoes this month and NONE MORE
• I'm allowed to look in my bag of eight products and decide what to use on a day-by-day basis but I have to be smart. Big meeting? Probably don't want to wear OCC's Rollergirl that day. (OR DO I?)

The photo above are my selections for Week One. An interesting first bag with an OCC Lip Tar, a Bite Beauty Lip Gloss, one of my favourite Urban Decay Lipsticks and a few under-used others. Follow along on Instagram as I share pictures of these lippies and tune in next week for my reviews and round-up.

Why am I doing this?

Ultimately I want to eliminate some lippies from my collection. I'd like to remove at least five products that are either too similar, or are not flattering. Once I can let go of a few of these products, I can think about letting some other ones into my makeup case. (A Too Faced Melted lipstick perhaps?)