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What does a reset mean to you? Maybe it’s a clean slate or a chance to start fresh. Or perhaps it’s an opportunity to step into the best version of yourself. With 2024 quickly approaching, we’re motivated to craft our vision boards, make sweeping habit changes, and transform our lives. But the key to lasting, meaningful change starts before the clock strikes midnight on NYE. From Camille, I’ve learned that meaningful goal-setting starts with an intention. Who do we want to be in the new year? And to discover that, we have to be clear on who we are now. What are the things that serve us, and what are the things that don’t?

In the final days of the year, I’ve been carrying this mindset into everything I do. It’s inspiring to see every task as a possible entry point for change. Decluttering my wardrobe is a promise to be a more stylish and sustainable person. Scavenging for leftovers in the fridge reminds me that my first grocery haul in 2024 will be a healthier one. And going through the motions of my skincare ritual begs the question: what beauty trends do I want to take with me into the new year—and which am I leaving behind?

Featured image from our interview with Babba Rivera by Belathée Photography.

Beauty is such a fickle industry. Yet, it’s a significant part of many of our lives. I’ll always be navigating my relationship with my skin, hair, and overall wellness through the lens of ever-evolving beauty standards—but this doesn’t mean remaining at the mercy of the trend cycle. Some beauty trends offer inspiration while others provide fleeting entertainment before fading into obscurity. These are the beauty trends we loved this year worth keeping—and those we’re leaving behind.

Beauty Trends to Ditch

Barbiecore

Call it controversial, but it’s time to say “bye, Barbie.” It’s hard to think of any trend that defined 2023 more than this one. Barbie was a pop culture phenomenon that crossed into literally every sphere of our lives—fashion, beauty, nail trends, and even home decor. And while this fun, femme film will always be close to my heart, the trend has run its course. Pantone named Peach Fuzz 2024’s color of the year, and I’m excited to see this more subdued, retro hue take the crown from Barbie pink.

Concealer Lips

This millennial makeup trend has reared its head again thanks to Sofia Richie. And while some sources call the trend “chic,” the style guru’s beauty influence has raised red flags in the past. (Yes, styling your wet hair into a slick-backed bun will cause breakage.) Even though we’ve come a long way from the caked-on concealer lips of the early aughts, we’re still in favor of other lip trends—like brownie glazed lips and lip stains—that seem to be holding strong.

TikTok Microtrends

Speaking of viral beauty looks, I vote we let them have less influence in 2024. Beauty trends move too quickly to keep up with these days. Tomato girl? Cold girl? Cinnamon cookie butter? The hyper-specific beauty “cores” and food-likened trends are inspiring fodder for experimenting with different aesthetics, but keeping up with each new trend is exhausting. I vow to only try the trends that truly speak to me, instead of buying every viral product that comes across my feed.

Laminated Brows

Laminated brows offer an accessible alternative to expensive microblading treatments. They’ve been described as a longer-lasting version of soap brows. And here’s the thing: I actually still like these. But I’ve been burned by brow trends before. Whether it’s thick or thin brows, somehow we always look back on them with regret. So I say, keep it simple and ditch the brow trends in 2024.

Snail Mucin

Snail mucin has been a popular ingredient in K-beauty products for over a decade and it has finally reached the mainstream. Especially with the nascent popularity of slugging. But in the K-beauty landscape, snail mucin is out and vegan alternatives like bean essence and wild yam are in. Maybe these will make their way into the zeitgeist this year.

DIY Skincare

I’ve gotten into sea moss in my smoothies this year. (Thanks, Erewhon.) But, I’m so sorry, nothing will convince me to put it on my face, despite the alleged skin benefits. This is true for pretty much any potent ingredient. It’s time to put DIY skincare behind us. Luckily, you can get natural ingredients like probiotics, vitamin C, and even olive oil in skincare products instead of your pantry.

Buccal Fat Removal

You know a beauty trend is already dated when you can barely remember it. But no, you didn’t dream it—everyone really was obsessed with buccal fat removal this time last year. While this treatment might have inspired much talk and many headlines, we’ve pretty much already put it to bed. But we can carry the natural facial sculpting trend into 2024.

Beauty Trends to Embrace

All the Hydration

Slugging, skin milk, shea butter—this year was all about hydration. No matter your skin type, everyone is at risk for dehydrated skin. So topping up on hydrating ingredients is always a good idea. In 2023, there was a hydrating product for pretty much every step of your routine. And since adequate hydration leads to faster skin recovery, slower signs of aging, and smoother texture, I’m excited to see what 2024 brings.

Oils in Abundance

For too long, people with oily skin were afraid to delve into the world of facial oils. We were also told that oil products were bad for our hair. But 2023 normalized using oils everywhere. Hair oiling, oil cleansing, body oils, and facial oils should all be part of your routine—no matter your skin or hair type.

Retinol, Everywhere

Retinol is not as intimidating as it once was. And it’s creeping into more and more beauty products. Of course, I will always swear by tretinoin to improve skin texture and reduce inflammation. But now, there are so many options to help you start your retinol journey in 2024. Bakuchiol is a fave clean-beauty retinol alternative. And over-the-counter retinol creams make vitamin A easy on your skin. Even retinol body products are having a moment. If you didn’t start retinol this year, make it happen in 2024.

Baby Botox

Baby Botox, aka bite-sized Botox, is the practice of getting smaller injections of Botox for a more natural look. It’s also a good way for Botox beginners to ease into the process. With the rise of preventative Botox and Botox for wellness reasons like muscle tension, small doses of Botox have surprising uses. We’ll see more of them come to light in the new year.

Skinimalism

One of the buzziest skincare trends of 2023 wasn’t a product or a particular look. It was skinimalism: the art of doing less with your skin. After the ubiquity of 10-step skincare routines and the pressure to purchase every so-called miracle product, skinimalism is about slowing down and being intentional about what you put on your skin. The best skincare routine for you isn’t the same as anyone else’s, and skinimalism encourages a personalized, less but better mindset that we see continuing in 2024.

Embracing Aging

For so long, beauty products and treatments have been packaged up as a way for us to delay the inevitable. With that, came an element of shame—that if our skin showed any fine lines, wrinkles, or crow’s feet, we were doing it wrong. Thankfully, the conversation surrounding aging is in the process of shifting, and we’re beginning to see more skincare and makeup brands catering toward highlighting our features and helping us feel best in our own skin.

But rather than canceling our Botox appointments or skipping the eye cream, we’re connecting with the tools available to us in a way that’s empowering and dependent solely on how we want to show up in the world. Continuing into 2024, we’re trying the trends and products that resonate, and leaving whatever doesn’t. After all, what it means to age well is entirely up to you.

Can you remember a time when you’d never heard of Viagra? I’m sure the time frame existed, but the popular medication (or Cialis, or the numerous other FDA-approved drugs that boost male sexual performance) has always felt as available as something like Excedrin (albeit a bit more taboo). It’s commonplace, whether you use it or not. Now, try to think of the women’s equivalent to Viagra. Stumped? That’s not on you. The female libido has been understudied and misunderstood. But thankfully, that’s all starting to change.

A women’s version of Viagra isn’t entirely nonexistent, however. Flibanserin (aka “Addyi” or “the little pink pill”) was finally FDA-approved in 2015. It works a bit differently than Viagra, targeting desire rather than sexual performance (the mental rather than the physical), with more than 10% of patients reporting meaningful improvements to their libidos in clinical trials. Sadly, the biggest difference between Addyi and Viagra is that the former, which still has no generic equivalent, is rarely covered by insurance.

Featured image by Michelle Nash.

What Doctors Have Gotten Wrong About Female Libido

It’s a frustrating symptom of an even more infuriating problem: the topic of women’s sexual health is woefully misunderstood and underserved.

“There are decades of progress needed with payers to recognize that women deserve sexual healthcare,” shares board-certified OB/GYN Dr. Lyndsey Harper. “The problems are not just in our heads… we deserve access to these medications.”

Low Sex Drive? You’re Far From Alone

Dr. Harper’s journey into the world of women’s sexual healthcare began in 2018 while working in private practice. Countless women began expressing the same concern: they didn’t feel like having sex with their partner—ever. 

“My patients were needing a lot more support than I was trained to offer them,” Dr. Harper recalls. “I didn’t even realize I was missing such a vital part of women’s health in my training until women began sharing.”

The dominoes fell all at once as she began recalling medical school and residency.  “I was like, Wait a minute… why don’t I know anything about women’s sexual health?” she thought. “And wait, why did I spend two weeks in an erectile dysfunction clinic in medical school? And why are there no FDA-approved [sexual health] medicines for women that are covered by insurance and there are 26 that are covered for men?”

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PHOTO: Image by Michelle Nash

A Shift in Women’s Sexual Health Studies

In 2019, Dr. Harper founded Rosy, a freemium app that has connected over 200,000 women with personalized solutions for sexual wellness concerns. As of 2023, more than 11% of the nation’s OB/GYNs recommend the Texas-based femtech startup, which has raised upwards of $4.2 million in funding.

And while there is much work to be done, Dr. Harper has noted a desire for change in the medical community since Rosy first launched.

“What we’re starting to see is the awakening of the medical community to the fact that there is this gap, which is leading to a lot more interest, which is leading to more people getting individually trained after residency like I did,” Dr. Harper explains. “Then we can train up future residents. Big shifts like this in medicine take decades, but I think in terms of awareness, excitement, and openness to the topic, we have made a ton of progress in the past four years.”

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Reframing the Way We Think of Women’s Sexual Health

It’s not just the medical community that needs to reframe how it thinks about women’s sexual health, however. Dr. Harper points to a recently published article in The New York Times, “Women Have Been Misled About Menopause,” which discusses the ways in which menopausal women have been underserved. “It suggests that we have a high cultural tolerance for women’s suffering,” Rebecca Thurston, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh, shares in the article.

“We accept things that we shouldn’t be accepting,” Dr. Harper adds. “But it’s not our fault. We just haven’t been given permission by society.”

If there’s one room in the house that tends to slip into disarray, it’s the bathroom. As one of the most frequented rooms in the house outside of the kitchen, a clean and coordinated bathroom can quickly turn into a disorganized one. It’s for those reasons that many of us are searching for the best tips on how to organize your bathroom.

So, in our desperation to remedy the chaos, we turned to organizing expert and owner of Rachel and Company, Rachel Rosenthal, for tips on how to organize your bathroom. Let me tell you, she’s serious about organization. After law school, Rosenthal gave up the security and stability of a 9 to 5 career to build a professional organizing firm instead. All of us here, plus Rosenthal’s clients, can say with certainty: we’re so glad she did. Take a glimpse at Rosenthal’s Instagram, and you’ll see why.

Ahead, we share her tips for how to organize your bathroom, from the bathroom drawers to the bathroom cabinets and so much more!

Featured image of Catherine McCord’s bathroom by Teal Thomsen.

Tackle Your Bathroom (Or Any Space) Mentally First

How many times have you said to yourself mid-week I’ll clean out the bathroom this weekend and then come said weekend, you somehow find a million other things to do? The result—nothing gets done. This could go on for weeks, months, years… you get the picture. Want to know why we keep putting it off? Rosenthal says being in the right mindset for organizing is so important before you jump into tackling any space (the bathroom included).

“Getting yourself mentally ready to declutter as well as ready to change your systems is crucial to making any organization project stick,” she tells me. “If you try to conquer a space without the right mindset or motivation you are less likely to maintain the systems in the long run.”

If you’re struggling with the mental side of organization, Rosenthal reminds me that you don’t have to organize room by room. “You don’t have to declutter and organize your whole bathroom in one sitting,” she adds. “You can start small with just a drawer or just the space under your sink. Organizing one small space well will have a much greater impact than organizing a larger space without the right headspace behind it.”

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First Things First: Declutter, Declutter, Declutter

Before you do any organizing, Rosenthal urges all of us to declutter first—”it’s the most crucial step.” You need to start by taking everything (yes, everything) out of the space you are organizing and then follow her steps for decluttering below:

1. Take everything out of the space and lay it out in one spot.

2. Do a quick initial sweep of the items to pull out any trash. Think empty toiletries—such as containers of floss or stray cotton balls.

3. Review products for expiration dates. Even in the bathroom, products have expiration dates (especially those miscellaneous medications). Rosenthal uses this guide here for makeup products, but be sure to check the dates on your specific items.

4. Create categories of products and items. This will be slightly different for each person and their routines in the bathroom. Make categories that make sense for you, like hair care, skincare products, medicines, etc.

5. Review categories for duplicates and declutter where possible. Do you really need 12 mascaras? Are you ever going to use that clarifying shampoo that you can’t stand the smell of? Having like with like will allow you to see what you have more easily to be able to part with the items you don’t need.

6. Take notes of the items you need to restock. The organizing and decluttering process is mostly focused on parting with items but can also be a great way to set you up for success down the line by evaluating what essentials you might be running low on and need to pick up at the store.

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Create Product Categories to Streamline Your Bathroom Routine

This might be a new concept for many of you reading this, but if you want to streamline your morning and evening bathroom routine, think of your bathroom products in terms of categories. Be sure to keep your bathroom routines in mind when creating them to streamline your mornings or evenings in the bathroom, aka not spending a lot of time searching for the right products.

“This might mean you are categorizing morning routine together and nightly routine together vs. all cleansers in one spot,” says Rosenthal. “Your bathroom routine is personal and your organization of the space should be no different.” Hear, hear.

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Invest in Bathroom Storage

Once you have those categories in place, Rosenthal says it’s important to keep them together and organized. Below, she outlines some of her favorite products for organizing bathroom categories.

To organize a drawer:

These deep bins are perfect drawer organizers and create multiple categories within one drawer. Whether your bathroom vanity drawers are deep or shallow, these offer ample sectioning for all of your necessities.

To organize a cabinet:

These multi-purpose bins work great in a cabinet or under the sink space to create definition between different categories.

To organize a shelf:

These pantry bins are wonderful on a shelf. I use these for everything from organizing sunscreen to keeping extra makeup that is not in my daily routine.

When you need storage out on the bathroom counter:

Not all of us are blessed with lots of hidden storage spaces in our bathrooms. These clear stackable drawers and space-saver hair and makeup station are great for creating a system on your counter that looks good enough to stay out all the time.

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So, what about really tiny bathrooms?

If you live in a small apartment like me, then you’ll know the struggle is real. But fear not, Rosenthal has a solution for how to organize your bathroom when it’s small, too. She recommends turntables (like this lazy Susan or this two-tier pick) as fantastic options for small bathrooms. “Turntables allow you to really maximize space efficiently by allowing you to easily access items that would otherwise be hidden in a corner or only accessible by moving a number of other products,” she says. These spaces are great for storing bigger items, such as extra toilet paper and hand towels.

If you don’t have any counter space and limited square footage, then Rosenthal says to go up. “Utilizing height is a great way to maximize storage in any bathroom,” she recommends. “This might mean using a multilevel drawer system under your sink or getting stackable bins on taller shelves to store items you don’t use as often.

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Separate Your Backstock From Your Day-To-Day Items

If there is one organizational hack Rosenthal wants to stress, it’s to separate your backstock from everyday items to allow your bathroom to function better on a daily basis. “No one wants to run out of toothpaste or be scrambling when you have just a tiny sliver of soap left, but all of those extras can create clutter in your bathroom,” she stresses.

“Backstock can be stored somewhere out the way (a laundry room, linen closet, or even under your bed if you live in a small space). Use bins to keep your backstock contained and organized.” This is also a great way to store first aid products in your bathroom (something we all don’t think we need until we definitely need it).

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Rosenthal’s Top 5 Tips for How to Keep Your Bathroom Organized All Year Long

1. Start Labeling

Labeling is key to maintaining an organized space. Having labels on bins, drawers, and cabinets will make it so much easier for you to put items away in the correct spot and continue the systems you put in place.

2. Schedule Monthly Refreshes

Organization is not a one-time event. Having an organized space requires maintenance and refreshes every so often. You don’t have to do a full deep declutter and organization each month but setting aside a little time to do a quick once-over of the space to put everything away and tidy up will help your bathroom from getting out of control.

3. Give Everything a Home

If you start off with everything in your bathroom having a home, you will be much more likely to keep the space clean and organized over time. This means deciding where each category you created during decluttering goes in the space and perhaps investing in some bins or baskets to house those categories.

4. Be Mindful of What You Bring Into the Space

It can be easy to fall back into a disorganized mess if you are not careful with what you bring back into your space. You don’t have to be as ruthless as one in one out, but as you purchase new products, make sure you are thinking through if this can replace something you already have. (And if so, toss that duplicate item.) If not, is there a spot that it will fit within the organization system?

5. Don’t Forget About Laundry

Yesterday’s clothes or today’s dirty towel can be the culprit of a cluttered bathroom. Give yourself a space to pop laundry in the bathroom to keep the space looking neat and tidy.

Everything You Need for an Organized Bathroom

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This post was originally published on January 21, 2021, and has since been updated.