Project Pan is a beauty-community challenge: pick a set of products you already own and commit to finishing them before buying replacements. The name comes from makeup, where using a pressed powder down to the metal pan underneath is called hitting pan. For skincare the same idea means emptying the bottle, tube or jar. Common variants set a number and a deadline, such as finishing 10 products by the end of the year.

How is Project Pan different from a No-Buy?

A No-Buy (or Low-Buy) restricts what comes in: no new purchases for a set period, sometimes with exceptions for genuine replacements. Project Pan directs what goes out: finish specific products you already own. They combine well, since finishing products is easier when new ones aren't arriving, but they are separate commitments.

Is there an app for tracking Project Pan?

Most participants use spreadsheets, notes apps or Instagram story highlights, which work until the upkeep lapses. A skincare inventory tracker automates the record-keeping side: every product and backup on one shelf, an empties log that fills itself as you mark products finished, and a would-you-buy-it-again verdict per empty. Hadakeo is one browser-based option built around exactly that loop; any tracker that logs per-product finish dates can serve.

Project Pan: how to actually finish your skincare, and track it

Last updated: 25 July 2026

Disclosure: this guide is published by Hadakeo, a browser-based skincare tracker described near the end. Everything before that section applies whatever you track with, including a paper notebook.

What Project Pan is

Project Pan started in the makeup community: commit to using a pressed powder or blush until the metal pan shows through, instead of buying the next exciting thing at 30% used. Applied to skincare, the pan is the empty bottle: pick products you already own and finish them before replacing them.

The point isn't austerity. It's that most collections quietly carry products at various stages of "started and abandoned", and skincare, unlike powder, goes off on a countdown from the day it was opened. An abandoned serum isn't waiting patiently; it's expiring. Finishing what's open is the cheapest skincare upgrade there is: you already paid for it.

The common variants

10 Pan (or 5, or 20). Choose a fixed roster of products and finish all of them before the challenge ends. The roster is the commitment; no swapping products out mid-run.
Use It Up. Softer: no fixed roster, just a rule that nothing new gets opened while an equivalent product is already open. One toner at a time, one moisturiser at a time.
No-Buy / Low-Buy. The intake-side companion: no new purchases for a set period (or a strict budget), often with an exception for true replacements, meaning a product you finished and genuinely missed.
Rolling Project Pan. Every finished product lets you add one new product to the roster. Sustainable as a permanent habit rather than a challenge.

Why most attempts fail at the tracking step

The community's own retrospectives are remarkably consistent: the challenge doesn't collapse because someone caved and bought a serum. It collapses because the record-keeping lapses. The spreadsheet was updated for three enthusiastic weeks; the Instagram highlight has four entries; nobody remembers whether the eye cream was started in March or May, which matters, because "am I making progress?" is the fuel the whole challenge runs on.

Skincare makes this worse than makeup in two specific ways:

Progress is invisible. You can see pan through powder. You cannot see through an aluminium tube or an opaque pump bottle, so without dates ("open since 2 February") there is no sense of movement at all.
Backups hide. The sealed duplicates in the drawer are the real size of the problem, and they're exactly what a memory-based inventory forgets. Many a No-Buy has been technically honoured while three unopened cleansers aged past usefulness in a box.

A tracking setup that survives past week three

Inventory first, roster second. Before picking your 10, list everything you own, including sealed backups. The roster should come from whatever is oldest and most at risk of expiring, not whatever is most boring to look at.
Record open dates, not just finishes. "Open since" is your visible progress for products you can't see into, and it doubles as expiry protection.
Log every empty with a verdict. The moment a product is finished, answer one question: would I buy it again? That list of verdicts is the actual prize of Project Pan; it's what turns a year of use into a shopping policy.
Watch two numbers, not twenty. Products finished, and backups still waiting. If the first grows while the second shrinks, the challenge is working, whatever else happens.

Where a tracker helps, honestly

All of the above works in a spreadsheet if you maintain it; the failure mode is the maintaining. A dedicated skincare tracker automates the boring half: the inventory (so backups can't hide), the open-date countdowns (so progress is visible), and the empties log with buy-again verdicts (so the challenge leaves you with a conclusion, not just a tidy shelf).

Hadakeo is our version of that: it runs in the browser on any device with no app store install, gets a whole haul in at once by photographing the shop receipt, counts physical units (so three backups of one cleanser count as three), and keeps an empties history where each finish asks for its verdict. The first 15 products are free, which covers a 10 Pan with room to spare.

Frequently asked

What counts as "finished" in Project Pan?

Empty enough that you'd throw it away: pumps that only sputter air, tubes cut open and scraped, jars visibly done. Declaring a product finished because you're bored of it is called panning out, and most rosters allow one or two honest ones per run.

Should expired products count toward the total?

Most participants say yes, with a separate mark: an expired product leaves the shelf and teaches the same lesson (you bought more than you could use), it just doesn't earn a repurchase verdict.

How long should a skincare Project Pan run?

Match it to product sizes: a 10-product skincare roster realistically takes six months to a year, because full-size skincare lasts months per item. Shorter runs work better with minis, sheet masks and nearly-done products.