2012: My Bonkers List Of Perfume Resolutions And Why Nobody Needs Two Daisy Bottle Tops

So if Twentieth Night was on Saturday, that must make today Twenty-Third Day, which you could say is a bit late to be making New Year's Resolutions, perfume-related or otherwise - I have almost certainly broken a few before they are even made. Ah, but it is only 17th January though, which doesn't sound so far behind the curve of resolve.

I am very boring when it comes to resolutions in my offline life. Every year I recycle the same old suspects, knowing full well that I probably won't keep any of them much beyond the end of the week. I am attached to this particular set of goals, not least because several have synonyms that rhyme:

Drink more (not alcohol, ideally) - hydrate

Use that body brush from two Christmases ago - exfoliate

Floss more - extricate

Cook more dishes from scratch - marinate and gratinate

Stop pretending to be an American by farting about on the computer till 2am, and get to bed at a sensible time, preferably on the same day as I got up - stay up less late

Eat more fish - eg skate and whitebait

The only resolution I have adhered to from this list is the one about eating more fish (though not the regul-at-ory varieties, admittedly - more your cod and salmon).

So given my dismal failure rate with run-of-the-mill New Year's Resolutions, you would think I could do no worse by setting myself some perfume related ones, so here goes:

Grow my nails

I am an inveterate nail biter, and find it increasingly difficult to prise off the stoppers on 1ml plastic vials. (Apart from which, I have two pots of Chanel Particulière and one of Paradoxal that are about six shades behind the current fashion because I haven't had a complete set of nails of the requisite length since 2009.)



Give up 2.5ml glass atomisers as a bad job

The problems I have had with this particular atomiser style and its so-called "snap fit" mechanism have been well documented elsewhere on Bonkers. Recent retrials have been just as messy and hopeless, and it is time to admit defeat. I know that it is all about the knack - hey, I have the knack - and still it doesn't work two times out of three.



Keep the office tidy

What's that got to do with perfume, you may ask? Well, a clear desk would be conducive to work, and if I don't work I shan't be able to support my perfume habit in all its manifestations, from financing new bottle purchases to decanting supplies and perfumista meet-ups. Today I started the big tidying operation in earnest, proceeding inch by inch, like police conducting a fingertip search or archaeologists on a dig. Intriguingly, amongst the effluvium of printed matter of every kind, I found laminated visitor badges from factories in Slovenia and Poland that I must have forgotten to return on my way out.

And in case anyone is curious, the Slovenian for "visitor" would appear to be:

OBISKOVALEC



Buy what I like, and deal with it

I have given up all resolutions along the lines of: "You must drain all your samples before you buy a full bottle", or "you must wait three months from the onset of the lemming before acting on it, in case it goes away again" - or even the "no list-skipping rule" whereby you buy the bottle you had in mind to buy, and don't allow yourself to snap up something else that you have only just taken a shine to, which then jumps to the top of the queue. All these rules are so easy to break that I will not restrain my spending, just live with the guilt that will inevitably follow. In practice, I am buying far fewer full bottles than I did in the first two years of my hobby - maybe not more than one a quarter? - and have of course largely perfected the art of the "fondle and replace manoeuvre".



NB Perfume sample travel bags are one exception to the above licence to spend. I am the Imelda Marcos of the perfume sample bag, owning at least seven or eight of the things, yet I only ever take one with me on even the longest of trips. Perhaps we perfumistas crave an endless variety of these bags instead of shoes or handbags, but personally I don't think I should be encouraged. Verdict: Stay out of T K Maxx!



Plough through my pending pile of perfume books

You know how it is - nice "literary" books pile up on the bedside table, like Lisa Chaney's biography of Coco Chanel: An Intimate Life, Damage Control by Denise Hamilton or Le Parfum by J-C Ellena, and then on an impulse I will go and buy the latest Kathy Reichs with "bones" in the title, and all my good intentions to read these more worthy tomes go out the window. In fairness, I have actually read Le Parfum now (it was slimmer than a Mills & Boon, luckily), so I may be able to make short work of The Alchemy of Scent, with which I understand it has a large amount of overlap.



Don't keep a scent diary

Okay, so this is more a case of letting go of a resolution previously held. For I did make a note of my SOTD up until April 2011 - quite religiously in fact - and have scarcely been back to see what I wore on "this day last year", type of thing. Nor can I be bothered to count the number of times I wore x, y and z scents, to see what styles or individual perfumes I am particularly drawn to. It isn't that I wouldn't find such information interesting - I would, and I admire the likes of Undina for her detailed analysis of her own scent behaviour - but I just don't have the energy to crunch the numbers.



Lose the nose bag

On the shelf above my head is a brown paper bag that looks like a nose bag. It contains a jumble of un- or once-tested scents waiting for another trial and review of their long term category status. It is the perfume sample equivalent of Guantanamo Bay or a prison wing full of lifers on appeal, and this unfortunate state of limbo mustn't be allowed to go on another year.



Don't keep perfume boxes in the fridge

Cardboard is hygroscopic - those wavy boxes with blurry lettering and tide marks are trying to tell you something.



Next up: the "YOU WILL NEVER HAVE A USE FOR THIS - SO WHY ARE YOU KEEPING IT?" series:

Empty manufacturers' sample cards

There used to be a vial of perfume in there, but it has either been used up or transferred to a travel bag, where the card would be a bulky inconvenience. Once a bulky inconvenience, always a bulky inconvenience. Verdict: chuck!



The innards of Serge Lutens boxes

Serge Lutens boxes have particularly complex internal architecture, on account of the fact that they come with both screw top and interchangeable atomiser. If the innards of the box have managed to strike out on their own, it is time to set them free.



Empty atomisers impregnated with a particular scent

Wash or let go? I decided - against all my instincts - to try washing the more expensive atomisers in this motley collection of empty perfume decants. Will let you know if it works. They may be soaking some time...



Futile funnels

Narrow, with a short stubby neck that is neither use nor ornament. I'd be better off throwing away these pointless funnels and using that nice plastic bag for something else...



Multiple bottle tops

There is a reason for how I came to have two tops for the same bottle. See if anyone can guess - it can be like one of those lateral thinking puzzles, you know, the ones involving a chair, a noose and a block of ice, or where a man cuts off his arm and sends it to another man in the post.... : - )



Upping the ante further, I appear to have about 14? atomiser tops to fit just one remaining bottom in this spiral 10ml size. How on earth did that happen? And why am I hanging on to the other 13...?





Photo of shopaholic from glamriah.com, other photos my own

Mouldy Old Kohl And Broken Bits Of Blusher: The Shameful Secrets Of My Bonkers Make Up Bag

My preoccupation with perfume storage has been comprehensively documented on this blog - I have devoted several posts to the subject, for example here and here, and am constantly agitating about the Heath Robinson ecosystem I have devised using a set of drawers and a beer chiller. The latter is packed to the gunnels and wetter than it should be; indeed I am seriously considering removing all the bottles from their boxes some time soon, to maximise space and also as an urgently needed anti-warp measure.

So you could be forgiven for thinking that I am equally vigilant when it comes to looking after my equally bulging collection of cosmetics - for after all, make up and scent have equal status in the female beauty armoury. Not so. I am sorry to report that my cosmetics suffer from wanton neglect at my hands, and a recent casualty has pulled me up short and made me resolve to mend my abusive ways.

For the other day I discovered patches of mould on the end of an eye liner pencil. I can't do proper close ups with this camera, and for the sake of readers' sensibilities, it is probably a good thing, though you may just be able to make out a tell-tale pale sheen on the tip. Yes, you know those little spots of whitish mould that develop on chocolate after a while? They are like that....lots and lots of them. So many that they have started to join up and form conurbations. And they glisten in a disconcerting way. Now that I have photographed the pencil, taken one last look at the tip, and had a go at capturing this bacteriological phenomenon in words, that is it now. The offending implement is in the bin, straddling a slimy banana skin and a greasy bag that had samosas in it, so I am not tempted to fish it out, or - God forbid - attempt a smoky eye with a very special silvery glint.

A cursory rummage in my make up bag has thrown up the following items that are probably past their best. First up is a MAC eyeshadow in Green Smoke that is smashed to smithereens (which didn't stop me chasing the last few frosted particles around the dish in the Ladies at Euston station before heading to The Perfume Diaries talk...For let's face it - someone wearing a frock backwards - even deliberately - to a high profile London event isn't going to be too precious about poking some shimmering shards with a little plastic stick.) Oh yes, I forgot to mention that the sponge tip of the applicator was loose and riddled with holes: a couple of foam shreds were actually hanging off the end like bait on a fishing rod. But going back to the splinters of eyeshadow, for the record I would just like to say that I do take my car to Autoglass at the first sign of a chipped windscreen. Had I waited until the windscreen resembled my eyeshadow pot, I probably wouldn't be around to write about its shattered state and compromised visibility...

And then there is my blusher. We'll pass lightly over it, with no jokes please about "At Risk Rouge". It is in a similar state to the eyeshadow, basically. The particular shade I favour has been discontinued by L'Oreal, though I managed to buy a back up on Ebay, which I will bring onstream when the current one becomes completely unuseable, which as you can see isn't particularly imminent. Lastly, I spotted a nail polish that may have seen better days. I mean, I am not entirely sure about this - it may just need a good shake.

Okay, so I fully accept that I mistreat my make up, but even though I curate my perfumes, keeping as many as will fit in the fridge at a perfect 10 degrees, I don't buy into this whole "mascaras should be kept for six months" argument. Some people put make up in the fridge, I understand. I suppose I could see a case for mascara being popped in there during a heatwave. Or eye liner pencil after 10 years, say.

Yes, shelf life is the other thing that bugs me about the cosmetics industry. The official line is that if you don't use up your lipstick or whatever in fairly short order, it will poison you. I may be misrepresenting this slightly, but I know they don't like you keeping make up for decades. Well, of course they don't - it's that old chestnut of "built-in product obsolescence" - whereby if we chucked the stuff away more regularly, we'd end up buying more. Mind you, that doesn't necessarily hold true, for I am forever buying impulse lipsticks. I just don't throw away the ones from 1992. Or only if I have grown out of the colour. But there again, pale frosted peach could come round again. The fact that it would look ghoulishly ghastly on lips of pensionable age is beside the point. I want to keep all my options open - even the Munsterish blackcurrant shade I once wore to a Hallowe-en party to accessorise my black eye. (Mr Bonkers has asked me to point out that I was going out with my previous partner at the time. And I really did walk into a door...)

Now if The Non-Blonde happened to see this post, she would be horrified. There is a very real risk that I would be struck off her blog roll, or at the very least urged to buy a better camera. Have you seen her amazing close ups? Those lipstick swatches on forearms are the business!

To sum up, I am not proud of my shabby treatment of cosmetics. I just think that for the most part, my priorities lie elsewhere. It comes down to the fact that I can only care for one category of beauty product at a time. It is probably a good thing I don't have children.

In future I vow to be more ruthless about throwing out items of make up that have "condemned" written all over them. Or they would if they had a few more atoms of pigment left for the concerned onlooker to write with. A recent TV documentary - INSIDE THE ROTTING ROOM (link to it here) - rather put the wind up me the other day about the issue of decay generally. And although I'd like to hang on to my five year old honeycomb for now - as it comes from the B & B next to the church where Madonna's son was christened : - ) - I have just been down to make a cup of tea, and while I was there I threw away a pot of marmalade that has a funny tang, and a nearly used jar of orange curd with a suspect brown fleck on the bottom. It could well be a crumb of toast, but for once I am going to play safe.

Photos of make up are all my own - I am mortified to say! Photo of me from the family archives : - )

Rising Damp! The Flight of The Flacons - II

Ever since acquiring a beer chiller to "curate" the key bottles in my collection, I must confess to feeling rather virtuous for taking such pains to care for my perfumes, keeping them in their optimum temperature controlled environment of 10 degrees C - well, except for the citrus ones, that is, who allegedly prefer it a little chillier - but I refuse to pander to minority groups.

Any feelings of smugness have been gradually eroded of late by the appearance of icicles on the inside roof of the fridge, which gradually lengthened, their sharp tips grazing the top shelf bottles. Perfumes may like it cold, but they do not like it wet.

Then this week - an odd one meteorologically speaking, what with this volcanic dust cloud and all the downstream aviation chaos it has wreaked - I realised that the icicles had now all melted and dripped through the fridge interior, forming puddles on boxes and depositing droplets of condensation on dozens of decants.

There was nothing for it but to evacuate the bottles for the second time and defrost the fridge properly. So once again, there was a sprawling refugee camp of perfume migrants on the bedroom floor. I closed the curtain to prevent the spring sunshine from inflicting any more damage. Having wedged a towel into the fridge to soak up the moisture, I set about examining the boxes to see what state they were in. Well, sadly there were about half a dozen, including PG Brulure de Rose and Creed Love in Black, that have water marks and some warping. And Ferre by Ferre is positively undulating, to the point that the lid no longer fits! So bendy indeed, that the Downward Facing Dog would be an absolute breeze for it. I'll call that Warp Factor 9. But mostly the damage was around the 3-5 mark, and it was the matt cardboard boxes rather than the glossy ones (Bvlgari Jasmin Noir, EL Sensuous) that were worst affected (packaging designers, please take note!).

Now, the other day I burned an indelible brown ring onto the kitchen work top in two very visible places, so in the grand scheme of things this is not a big deal. And Mr Bonkers is being very supportive about the kitchen disaster: "I hated that pattern anyway!"

I have learnt from this that keeping perfumes chilled and dark is easy (a fridge), dark and dry is easy (a drawer), but chilled, dark AND dry presents more of a challenge.