Out with the old ...

... and in with the new. I felt vaguely embarrassed by the pile of make-up gathering dust in my bedroom. All the more so as I only ever really wear mascara. Some of it went back years, other items were bought in a mad rush of blood to the head and I'll admit to some purchases as being nothing more than desperate attempts to re-capture my youth ( Mac - where all the make-up assistants look lie extras from the set of Twilight ).

There were enough eye-brow pencil to draw a line twice round the earth and back again, every shade of brown imaginable ( looked more like the shade card from a Farrow and Ball paint chart ) and a multitude of dodgy past the sell by date mascara.

So , what to do ? Throw it all out ( apart from the Mac which went to some of my very grateful students ) .

I'm now the proud owner of a minimalist set of essentials - mascara , brow liner, eye shadow, lip gloss , face powder something or other and a decent set of brushes. They fit nicely inside a squishy metallic gold make-up bag and I LOVE it. I have Hayley-Jo to thank at the Laura Mercier counter of John Lewis for making me look half decent .

I cannot describe the joy of getting up in the morning and knowing that the whole shebang only takes 2 minutes to locate, choose ( no choice involved ) and apply. Just think - that must have saved me at least 5 minus a day , 35 minutes a week , 1825 minutes per year or just over 31 hours of saved time ... in which to find something to wear that actually fits. That's a whole other story.

P.S  The only non Laura Mercier item in the photo is Gimme Brow by Benefit - cannot recommend it highly enough . For an old nobby no-brows like me , it actually fills in the gaps, from years of over-plucking, with fibres but doesn't make you look like Groucho Marx.