Useful everyday items for your vanity

I was at the grocery store the other day restocking some essentials, and it occurred to me that someone, somewhere might find it useful to see a few of the everyday things I keep around my vanity. Even though they aren’t technically makeup-related, they’re still really useful in my routine.

1. Elastic hairbands

These come in really handy when I wash my brushes – I use them to attach the brush upside down to my towel rack so the water doesn’t run into the ferrule and break down the glue.

2. Art pencil tins

Since they’re slim and metal, pencil tins are the perfect container for depotted products.

3. 3 gram sample jars

These aren’t exactly an everyday item, but still really handy to have! I got mine from Amazon. I use these to store foil samples without making a mess (there’s a lot more in those than it looks like!), or to mix foundations at the beginning and end of the summer when I’m between colors. Sometimes I even use them as a container to add a little bit of foundation or concealer to my moisturizer, and bam! Tinted moisturizer.

3a. Yard sale labels

These little guys are the perfect size and shape to label the sample pots.

4. Tissues

Great for blotting off any shine left over from my moisturizer/sunscreen, wiping off eyeshadow brushes between colors, cleaning up messes and of course the more usual, allergy-related purposes.

5. Precision Q-tips

I discovered these a couple weeks ago – instead of the regular rounded q-tips, these are pointed at the end. It makes them perfect for cleaning up my eyeshadow, fixing any smudges of mascara that I get on my eyelid by accident (at least once a day), or running over my lip line with makeup remover to get a really clean line.

So there you have it – some non-obvious things that ended up being really useful. What sort of everyday stuff have you made a part of your beauty routine? Leave a comment below!