How To: Make the most of a sample

It would be lovely if all product samples came in easy to use pots or tubes but sadly they don't and I'm sure I'm not the only beauty addict out there who has been harboring a stash of sachets. It's frustrating because the sachets often contain enough product for two or three uses (even more if it's an eye cream) but they're so fiddly that most of them end up in the bin after one use. No one wants an open sachet of foundation lying around, do they?

I was at an Estee Lauder counter one day when the assistant asked me if I wanted to try their new BB cream. I said that I'd love to and was presented with twenty sachets of the stuff and an apologetic "sorry, we're out of sample pots." Whilst I did want to try the product, the faff of using all those little sachets was putting me off. One day I finished up a face cream (a sample, actually!) and had a tiny brainwave. So, I sat down with my twenty sachets of BB cream and squeezed them into the pot. It was so much more convenient to use from a pot and since still have plenty of the BB cream left (it's a bit too light for me in summer), I look forward to using up the rest at my leisure. 

The moral of the story is that if you want to make the most of your sample sachets you should decant them into a pot. It works best if you have a couple of sachets of the same product or if you have an eye cream sample. Bear in mind that there's no point using this method if the sachets you have only contain one use.

What you'll need:

Sachet(s) of product

A clean pot - big enough to hold the amount of product in the sachets

Scissors

What you won't need: 

A nosy cat who tries to pinch everything...

Here I'm putting a 1ml sample of L'Oreal True Match foundation into a 7ml Clinique eye cream sample pot. I actually already have this foundation (and quite like it) so I reckon I'll get about three uses from this sample. This is probably not the best example for me to use but it was just what I had to hand.

I really recommend using this technique with eye creams; I had a 2ml sample of one from Comfort Zone and when it was in a pot I got about three weeks' use out of it. Always remember to keep the little pots for new samples, too!

I hope this was useful for some of you. If you have any tips on how to make the most of samples, leave them in the comments.

Stace xx