Near the beginning of my makeup wearing days, I noticed that my mascara seemed to invariably get dried, clumpy, and almost completely unusable after about 2 weeks of being opened and used. I had not idea what exactly caused this issue so initially I assumed it meant that the mascara had either run out or gone bad.
Based on this assumption, when I would notice that my mascara had gotten dry I would just throw it away and buy a new one. After a little while, I realized how much money I was spending on getting new mascara every couple weeks and I was not happy with this realization. I decided to figure out why it would get dry so quickly and if there was anything I could do to prevent it from doing that.
As a contact wearer, I usually have a big bottle of contact saline solution around at all times. After doing some research and experimentation, I found that if you add 2-3 drops of the saline solution into your dried mascara tube, then swish the brush around and apply to your eyelashes, there’s almost no dryness and clumpiness left. I’ve now been able to extend the life of a single mascara tube into several months, versus the 1-2 weeks I could get out of it before I started doing this.
Even if you don’t wear contacts, getting the saline solution just for it’s mascara-extending abilities might be a worthwhile investment, if you weight the costs of getting new mascara (even e.l.f.’s $1 tubes add up over time), and the price of Target’s contact the solution (using 2-3 drops a day will probably make it last a much longer time than even what I found so far, since I additionally use the solution for my contacts as well).
Low-Maintenance Guide to Survival 