How To Tell If Your Makeup Is Expired

So how do you tell if your makeup is expired? Or even your favorite fragrance? How do you know the shelf life? People always ask me, “How do you know when your makeup is expired? Do you use it after it is expired? Do you toss it?”

I’m actually a bit anal about makeup and fragrance expiration dates. I have a little handheld DYMO Label Manager and the first thing I do when I get new makeup, skincare, or fragrance is create a dated label of when I purchased the product. I take that label and I stick it on the bottom of the product. When you have a ton of different beauty products you’re testing, storing, and using you really need to keep track of when you purchased these products. This is the method I personally use.

I don’t purge often. The only things that get tossed out would be mascara, skincare, and fragrances that might be bad or have gone off. Many fragrances will last years and years if you store them in a cool, dark place but some will go off and won’t smell exactly the same way as when you purchased them. It really depends on the ingredients used in the creation of that fragrance.

Color cosmetics?

I never throw them out. They all get stored away if they are expired as I never know when I will have to go back to them for reference. If an eyeshadow expires I likely won’t use it on my eyes again but I will keep it just in case I need to reference the color or formula in a new post on Musings of a Muse.

The real question here is though how to tell if your makeup is expired. You might not be as anal as I am and you might have products laying around that you can’t recall the day you purchased. Here’s a quick way to give you an idea when or if it already is expired!

I have fragrances that I’m guilty of not labeling and in this case I use a really great site to tell me how old exactly my makeup and fragrance items are. I use checkcosmetic.net to check any of my older products that I haven’t labeled.

This site is ridiculously helpful to give you a general idea how old a product is. I actually like using it when I purchase a fragrance as it’ll give me a general idea how long it was hanging out on a store shelf before I came along to purchase it.

Simply check the bottom of the product you want to know the expiration date on and punch the little product code on it into Check Cosmetic’s search engine and POOF! Just like magic it’ll tell you the current shelf life in months so you’ll know how fresh your product currently is.

This site is a really great if you tend to purchase fragrances or even makeup from wholesalers like Fragrance.net, E-bay, All Cosmetics Wholesale, etc…as you can get a general idea of the age of the items you’re purchasing.

Granted it isn’t going to give you an exact date your product will expire but you can get a general idea of how old it is and whether or not it is time to trash it.

How you tell if your makeup is expired?

Do you label your makeup?

Keep a spreadsheet?

Do share!