In my interaction with friends and various talents, it occurred to me that many people don’t watch out for their make up expiration dates even though they know they should. While I do that for the make up I use on professional gigs, I realized I’ve been quite slack with my personal items too.

As a visual person, I realised I do really badly with lists. I also realized that if the list of relevant shelf lives aren’t nearby, most people wouldn’t bother marking it down after purchasing new makeup.

And so… Here’s introducing a new makeup expiration date cheatsheet for your use! Now on how to use it:

Download this cheat sheet and print it out. (You can size it down and cut it to size if you’d like. Thicker paper is also more durable!). Get some small stickers and a pen handy for storage at your dresser.

Some people suggest using permanent markers or sharpies to mark it down but I prefer my markings to be small, neat and visible on dark backgrounds – hence the choice of small dots.

I’ve included general and commonly used expiration dates on my cheat sheet. It all depends on how you use it too. For example, cream blushes that squeeze out of a tube will likely to have less germs introduced than a pot of cream blush which you stick your fingers into everyday. Powders are dry and have a longer shelf life than makeup that is moist. If you’re paranoid, take the earlier expiry date.

The cheat sheet also contains a small table at the bottom to help you figure out when three or six months later is. Just refer to the current month on the top row (in maroon), and refer to the relevant month three or six months later. If it runs into the next year, it has a small grey dot towards the top. (I know some of you are like – that’s silly! But I guess some of us just aren’t as good counting the months forward quickly? Or maybe it’s just me…)

And that’s it! Go through your makeup now and toss whatever’s dubious. And each time you buy new cosmetics, take out the cheat sheet and sticky dots at your dresser and label away!

If you have more time on your hands and you don’t like the idea of handwritten dates on your makeup, you could color code the months and color each sticker differently so it looks better in general.

{Click here to download the cheatsheet – right click and hit ‘save link as…’}

p/s Things have been crazy due to a multiple day makeup gig recently – apologies for not posting till now! I have a whole backlog of ideas stuck in my head so stay tuned for more soon!