Monthly Perfume Tray Rotations

Too many perfumes. First world problems, am I right?

I've loved perfumes my whole life. Okay, I can't speak for 0- to 2-year-old me because I don't remember those years. But I'm sure even then I loved perfume. My earliest memories of my mom are connected to her getting dressed up for a night of disco dancing with her girlfriends and liberally spraying on Cinnabar before she left the apartment. I was probably between the ages of three and five, and I feel nearly confident to say I was about three since disco was at its height in that timeframe. To this day I always keep a bottle of Cinnabar with me to recapture my first inkling of glamour. But I digress, as I always do.

I mention this life-long fascination and love affair with perfume to explain why I unapologetically have a large collection. I received my first perfume when I was nine; it was a teddy bear-shaped flaçon of Avon's Sweet Honesty. I shouldn't speak so broadly but I have a faint suspicion that this was every American girl's first fragrance, from 1973 to present day. I loved that bottle. I placed it on my dresser and built a shrine to it. That one bottle kickstarted a need to acquire more perfumes. Fast forward thirty-one years later and I still have a (large) shrine to my beauties. It happens to contain the two aforementioned scents, non-coincidentally.

Trust me, it didn't happen overnight. And, I must add, it wasn't built solely by me. It was built through the years and with many contributions from cherished friends and loving family members who don't understand my obsession but contribute to it anyway. (Friends who are members here, you know who you are and what you've done--and I'll forever love you for it!) These acts of kindness, in turn, inspired me to help build up friends', family's, and strangers' collections, whether they wanted my surplus or not.

So, I've now defended my large collection. In long-winded fashion. Yay!

Circling back to the issue of too many perfumes (which I don't believe is really a thing, at least in my case), I find it's sometimes hard to give much attention to some perfumes over others. It's not that I love one perfume over another. I have a tendency to focus on what's new or most accessible. These perfumes get the most love because, really, I'm lazy. Strangely, if something was removed I'd know it and have a hissy fit. Go figure. So what's a first-world gal to do?

It was proposed on that other perfume site that interested members set up a perfume tray with ten perfumes and wear only those perfumes. Pictures of said trays were encouraged. I love looking a perfume trays. I signed up for Pinterest just to look at perfume trays. (Okay, that and DIY furniture/interior design ideas. You get the idea, though.) I love a good perfume tray set up! And really, creating a good subset of perfumes to focus on during one month is a brilliant way to get to know what I own.

Since doing this I've been able to cull through what I own. I've sorted through what is a keeper and what is "meh" to my nose. Those perfumes I've grown blasé about are either sold on eBay, swapped, or gifted. So far, I've shed over 10% of my collection. Those unloved scents found homes with people who will love them. Better still, I've rekindled my love for some scents in my collection. For instance, I purchased a partially used bottle of Fleurs des Caraibes blindly off of eBay. I thought the peculiar banana-like floral scent was nice but nothing to boast about. Last month it was one of my focus scents and now I have a new love I can't wait to break out over the next several months.

Has anyone else done this? Would anyone be interested in doing this? If so, would you put up your pictures so I can ogle your trays!?

Thanks for reading this. And if you decide to put up pictures, thank you in advance! ;-)