Is there life left in my lipstick? How to get the most of your makeup with Every Drop

Let's start with the obvious: beauty products 'aint cheap. Then, if you want to use mostly natural and organic makeup, that can feel like the understatement of the year (shouldn't the products that are good for you be MORE accessible rather than less?). Add to the situation the fact that I am most definitely operating on a beauty budget and don't have free reign to purchase whatever I'd like, whenever I'd like to, and it becomes that much more important for me to fully use up the products that I do buy and enjoy.

Of course, here's where the manufacturers dupe us! They put lip glosses in extra long plastic tubes where neither the brush nor a Q-tip can reach, leaving a giant glop of product stuck at the bottom. Foundations are in odd-shaped glass bottles where product clings to the sides and feels irretrievable. Lipstick manufacturers try to trick you into thinking that you've used up the product when it no longer twists up past the top, but secretly they've stored a good inch of product below the surface. And don't get me started on perfumes! How many times has an expensive scent's pump just magically stopped working with plenty of product left inside, yet the top doesn't come off no matter what you do?

I can't say that I've solved the perfume problem, but I have made headway when it comes to scraping out every last drop of other hard-to-reach items like foundation, lip gloss, lipstick and anything that comes in a tube (eyeshadow primer, concealer, face primer, etc.), primarily thanks to a product line by that very name: Every Drop.

Perhaps off topic, but in case you didn't know, I am pretty obsessed with The Container Store (so obsessed that I have been to TWO grand openings in the last year). Now, you may have never really thought of The Container Store as a great place to shop for beauty items, but their displays at the front of the store almost always have some awesome beauty hack items (in addition to the products I'm about to talk about, I've also gotten a really fun Herban Essentials aromatherapy towelette kit from this section and an adorable sunglasses-shaped contact case).

The last time I was there, I was desperately searching for a few low-price items to push my order over the $100 mark (I was at $90 and if you spent $100 or more you got a free $15 gift card for your next visit). While I'm searching through the racks I spot these babies:

At $3.99 and $4.99 each, the price was perfect and I just knew that I could put them to good use. Let's talk about the Beauty Spatula on the left first.

• This thing totally saved me when my Gabriel Cosmetics foundation (beautiful glass bottle, but incredibly hard to get all the product that clings to the sides out) started to run out. The unique tapered and flexible edge of the tool allowed me to get into nearly every crevice of the bottle, and it kept me going in foundation for 2 weeks after I normally would have tossed it.
• As the packaging says, the other great thing about this tool is that it's made of plastic, not cotton like a q-tip, so it doesn't absorb any of the product that you're trying to scrape out, rather it's all there for you to actually use!
• Although I didn't need the length this time, another cool thing to point out is just how long this tool is. So if you're trying to scrape the last bit of shampoo or body lotion out of a tall container, this baby's got you covered in that arena too. 
• My ONLY gripe about this guy is that it's actually a bit harder to clean than you would imagine, and because the tip is white, it's got a tendency to stain a bit. I routinely wiped mine off with a tissue after each use, but tiny bits of makeup tend to get stuck on the underside of the wand and in the crevices where the tip meets the base. Even when I rubbed it with rubbing alcohol, I couldn't get it 100% clean. Since I know the alcohol disinfects I am fine continuing to use it, but they may want to make the tip removable so that you can fully clean it at every angle.

Now let's talk about the lip spatula!

 

• All of the benefits that I previously talked about definitely still apply here, although the cool thing is that this guy can actually be used as an applicator as well. I've tried it out with both lipstick and lip gloss, and although I didn't think it did a great job at applying lipstick (it's not quite flexible enough to truly apply to the contours of your lips, it works great with lip gloss. 
• For some reason I find this one easier to clean and I love that the tip is pink (plus I've noticed less staining on this one -- I think the tip is actually made of a less porous, more rigid material here, which might be helping). 

When scraping out the last drips and drabs of your lipstick tube, I actually like using my Sigma lip brush the best, because it can get the product out and be used as an applicator. Using my lip brush has allowed me to extend the life of my favorite retired MAC lipstick shade for 2 whole months! Like I said, you'd never know just how much lipstick is actually left in the tube if it was up to the makeup companies...just try it next time you think you've used up your lipstick and you'll be shocked!

Theres's one other product I want to talk about quickly. I purchased mine at The Container Store, but notice that Every Drop also sells a variety of these (and they may be better, but I can't say since I haven't tried them myself). The product I got was the Squeeze Ease Tube Squeezers to help with the annoying problem of product being stuck up inside a tube -- you know it's there, but you just can't get to it! The premise behind this product is that it squeezes out the air within the tube so that it pushes the product down and it can't escape back up into the tube. As you move it down, it shifts the product toward the nozzle so you can squeeze it out easier.

Although my tube squeezers worked ok on medium sized tubes like a toothpaste tube, I found them to be less effective on smaller tubes for beauty items because the seal wasn't tight enough. Conversely on larger items, the tail end of the tube was actually too big for the tube squeezer to fit around. So, great in concept, but lacking a bit in practice.

All in all, having these tools at my disposal has saved me a lot of money and has kept me from needing to run out and buy new versions of my favorite products as quickly. Do you have any tips or tricks for sticking to your beauty budget or using up every last drop of your products? Let me know in the comments section below!