The Stash Purge

A glimpse of my stash....

When one is as fragrance-obsessed as myself, it's inevitable that a collection will accumulate. Those lemmings duplicate and before we know it...we have more bottles than we know what to do with.


For myself, I had a brief period about 6 years ago where I had purged pretty much everything from my collection...resulting in a grand total of about 5 bottles. Fast forward till now and I can safely say that between samples, decants and full bottles....I'm well past the double-digits.


I was looking at my collection recently and was seized by a fit of anxiety. There was just WAY too much in there. Incredibly overwhelming, attempting to look into my stash and figure out what to wear on any particular day. So I made myself do the unthinkable: take every single bottle out of its box and organize. (Those boxes take up a ton of room!) And yes, my mother's voice popped up into my head, telling me how important it is to keep that precious juice out of sunlight and heat....The problem was that since I had everything boxed, I had literally forgotten about half the stuff in my collection. So I had to weigh my options: have everything hidden and nicely preserved, or unearth all of those dusty bottles (at the risk of having them turn more quickly) and enjoy. Needless to say, I chose the latter.


Realizing how much I had that I literally hadn't worn in years, I had to come to a decision: to keep or not to keep? It's kind of embarrassing, admitting that I have some bottles in my collection purely for nostalgia's sake (Britney Spears Fantasy anyone?) The stuff that I had worn years ago and associate with particular times of my life but rarely revisit. Do they warrant that precious real estate? Is it time to let go? I think so.


I have my moments where I get into a major swap frenzy, trading as much as I can. At certain times though, I have such an insane hankering to get rid of stuff that I just pack it up and send it away to my cousins overseas. Who absolutely love their fumes. (Is it genetic? Maybe so... ;-) I also like to pawn stuff off on other unsuspecting family members (who will often gladly take any castaways :)


What do you fellow perfumistas do when you're hankering for a stash purge? Giveaways to friends and family members? Online auctions, swaps, or do you just put them away somewhere to retrieve later for future enjoyment?