Sephora.com

I am a girly-girl. Growing up, I had a pastel canopy bed from Sears and a fierce love of dresses and OHMYGODILOVEPINK. I remember my makeup drawer which housed all the discarded trial-size makeup from my mother’s “free gift with purchase” totes.  Tiny eyeshadows, tubes of lipstick, mini-mascaras, and eyelash combs (why did they all have eyelash combs?) were my prized items.

All these years later, I still get a rush from getting new makeup or beauty products.  The difference is, a) I hardly have time to get myself to a legit make-up counter, b) my inertness is exponentially increasing with time and children, and c) any trips to the mall with children in tow is basically an exercise in mental stamina.

Instead, I’ve been getting my beauty fixes at sephora.com.  I first fell in love with the Sephora store in San Francisco when visiting there many years ago. All those luxe products! All that make-up! All available to be sampled! I was in heaven (and leaving there looking significantly better than when I entered.)

On sephora.com, you can get all of those products, including some of the hard-to-find beauty items I covet. Anything over $50 ships for free (I NEVER have a problem meeting this requirement; I just batch my order until I have that amount.) There are also free returns and Ooh!Ooh!Ooh! three free samples with every order.   I love that there are customer reviews of products—very helpful when trying something new, and especially since customers can say what age group they are in, kind of skin/hair, etc, so you get a better idea of whether a product will work on you. For instance, I’m much more likely to trust the review of a woman aged 35-44 on an eye cream than an 18-24-year old. (You think you know crow’s feet? I’ll show you crow’s feet!)

Also helpful are being able to see the best-sellers of each category and being able to search products by line and type.

The main negative I see is that it makes me spend more money on beauty products than I would otherwise (as in none, if sitting on the couch, all inert-like, as I am wont to do.) Also, you can’t just buy plain-old grocery-store beauty products—it’s all more high-end = $$$. I’ve never had to return anything so I can’t comment on that.

The site is easy to navigate and I’ve always found the standard shipping to be fast. Of course, I lack the ability to actually try on that cool new lip gloss or smell that grassy/bug-spray scented dry shampoo before I buy, but the ability to order these items while sitting on the couch and WITHOUT a small person pulling my shirt telling me she has to go to the bathroom RIGHT NOW, is hard to beat.