Apparently, there’s a whole thing called “Project Pan.” My daughter explained it to me: you use every last drop of the products you own before buying new ones.
Which feels obvious… except, have you seen my bathroom shelves? Skincare shopping is fun. But clutter is not.
So here I am, massaging mystery oils into my elbows and committing to at least a year of lotion purgatory.
Bonus challenge from my daughter: Project Pan, but for my yarn stash. Jury’s still out on that one.
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Transcript: Have You Heard of Project Pan?
Okay, so have you heard of Project Pan? I hadn’t heard of it. My daughter actually told me about it. It is basically where you take all of your toiletries, your creams and your lotions and your cleansers, and you use them all up before you buy new ones.
I did not really fully understand Project Pan. My daughter explained it is like you use it down to the pan before you move on. I am no branding expert, and I probably would have called it something different, but anyway, it stuck. Project Pan.
So I am embarking on Project Pan, and I am super on board, because I have so many bottles of stuff in my bathroom. I do not even know how I have accumulated them. I think partly it is because, and I am going to be really honest here, buying skincare products is fun and I get bored. But then I actually do not like the clutter of it, and I like the feeling of being efficient and using stuff up.
It might take me a year or two years to use up all my stuff, but it has also made me take all my beautiful oils and put them together and blend them. It has made me use them after my bath and my shower, which I usually do not do. So it has kind of made me do more self-care and take care of myself better.
So anyway, the question is, are you on board for Project Pan? What would be fun is if people shared photos of what is in their medicine cabinet, and then together we can decide to use it all up before we buy new stuff. I think it is okay if there is a product that is your staple, something you need to buy another one of. But all of the other stuff, the non-essentials that we collect, it would be fun to use them up.
Then my daughter said to me, “But Mom, you have to do this for yarn also,” because one of my favorite pastimes, and what I do when I am stressed, is shop for yarn. I dream up new projects, and then the dreams exceed the amount of time I have to finish the old projects. So I have all of this yarn just waiting to be turned into something.
She has challenged me to do a Project Pan on my yarn and use everything up before I buy more. That one I am not sure I can commit to. But I will share my progress on Project Pan as I go, and I would love you to share yours. Let’s see if we can get to this delicious place of having no product left, so we get to go and choose what we buy next. That will be fun.
Let me know how it goes. All my love, thanks for listening.
