By Adesuwa Guobadia

Every woman has her go-to, tried-and-true beauty regime. But everyone makes mistakes, and the first step in resolving them is recognizing the problems – because beauty blunders can be outright destructive. If you’ve picked up some of these bad habits, it’s time to stop, and here’s how.

1. Washing your hair every day:

If you have any type of texture to your hair – whether it’s curly, kinky or something in between – you’ve probably already broken out of this habit. Daily hair washing has a tendency to strip our strands of their natural oils, leading to dry, rough-feeling tresses and ultimately, an unhealthy head of hair.

The ideal way to break this beauty habit is to stop washing your hair everyday, and switch to washing it every other day or every third day. Some of you may have gotten used to a daily hair-washing schedule, and this idea might make you a bit uncomfortable. But there’s an answer here for you, too.

Another solution is to put conditioner on the ends of your hair before you shampoo. This way you are protecting the oldest and most fragile parts of your hair from the harsh detergents and surfactants that are in most cleansers without having to skip washing.

2. Falling asleep in your makeup:

You get home late from a fun night out with friends, look in the mirror and know what you should do. You should take off your lashes, foundation, liner, and mascara, but all you want to do is fall into bed – with a face full of makeup and all.

While skipping your makeup removal routine might seem harmless in the short term, it really is detrimental to your skin’s health. A lot of makeup, especially foundations and primers, contain silicone and heavy oils that make them highly comedogenic and likely to cause breakouts if they are left on for too long.

The perfect makeup removal routine includes washing your face twice: once to remove makeup and the other to actually clean your facial skin. Cleansing twice is the last thing most of us want to do after a long night out, so another option is to keep makeup remover pads by your bedside. These are by no means a substitute for properly cleansing your face, but they will definitely come in handy on one of those lazy, late nights.

3. Product hoarding:

Beauty product hoarding is the practice of collecting makeup, hair, skin and other beauty products to the point of excess. Why is this a bad thing? If you are always buying new products, then you are probably always trying out new products too. There’s nothing wrong with switching up your routine, but how can you know what works for you if you are always swapping out one product for another?

Project 10 Pan is a great way to bust this bad habit. It is essentially a challenge to not buy any new beauty products until you have completely used up ten full-sized products. If you are a super hoarder, then Project 10 Pan may seem a bit daunting, so try doing it with a group of friends. You will be able to hold each other accountable and give each other reviews on the products you’re finishing up. Two-fer!