For the past 10 years, my makeup has resided in a lovely Italian home. After graduating from my pink glitter Caboodle (you know you had one too), my beauty stash settled comfortably into one of the first designer accessories I ever owned: a beautiful black nylon Prada makeup case. I can still taste the the thrill of buying it with my own money, receiving it in the mail, and assembling (throwing) all my makeup into it that very night! With durable lining and leather trim, two spacious zipper compartments and two flat outer pockets, tremendous versatility and that sexy silver iconic triangle, I was a happy, Jappy camper.

Thinking back on it, my nylon Prada makeup case is, arguably, the single possession I used more than any other during the past decade of my life.

At home, I reached into it daily. It stored all my frequently-used makeup and skincare products. It bounced between drawers, vanities, dresser tops and bathroom counters, depending on where the best lighting was in my various living situations. It also served as my traveling makeup and toiletry case; how easy it was to shift the makeup I needed to one side and pack small toiletries into the other, storing Q-tips, tweezers, hair things, instant breast lifts, Midol and other random girl-emergency necessities in the outer pockets. It kept my lipsticks safe and my moisturizers warm at night. It was everything I’d ever dreamed of in a makeup pouch, and the glistening triangular Prada Milano emblem continued to make my heart skip a beat for years to come.

Until… things started to get hairy. Well, not exactly hairy… but it looked like hair. Felt like hair. After daily usage, my Prada nylon began to slowly shred from the inside out. First, the lining broke open, baring its not-so-glamorous designer innards. I duct taped the first signs of breakage, but it turns out even duct tape can’t fix everything.

But besides the shredding, my Prada endured some of the harshest spills and stains in cosmetic history. Oil spills far less tragic than that of the Gulf, but don’t underestimate the power of Moroccan Oil.

I used to do annual cleanings. I’d dump out my boatload of beauty about once a year, edit out the old and unused, and Shout-scrub it back to near-normalcy. But after the shredding began to ellipse the staining, I feared it wouldn’t survive the the annual ritual. Shimmery eyeshadows, unidentified pink stains, and some extremely sticky residue began to make permanent habitation on both the inside and the outside of my Prada. For years, she went unwashed, enduring the daily tribulations of containing the reckless beauty supply of a glitter-loving, goopy-makeup-testing spa blogger.

There comes a time in every woman’s life when she is faced with a sobering material dilemma: To Part or Not To Part With Prada?

As I binge-cleaned out my top dresser drawer last week (which, by the way, is where I keep pretty much every single beauty item that I use more than once a month, plus 80% of my makeup and jewelry – it needed that cleaning), I was confronted with this very pickle. Now, I come from a family of hoarders – not in a True Life kind of way, but let’s just say that I’m pretty sure there are still hair sprays from ’96 in my childhood bathroom. So when I plucked my sticky, soiled Prada out of the drawer, my hands turning mildly adhesive in the process, it crossed my mind for the first time that….. perhaps…….just maybe……….. it was time to say goodbye.

The truth is, Prada nylon had its day. That day is not today. That day has not been today for 5 years now. But still, isn’t it sacrilegious to throw away Prada? There had to be some sort of constitutional regulation addressing this issue. But if there was, I decided this decision would be made by my own congress. I could take it to the dry cleaner and have a massive surgery performed, I thought. I could give it to that homeless woman on Lafayette, I pondered. But then, I thought better of it. I dumped out all my makeup one last time, did a brief photo shoot, tiptoed to the garbage shoot down the hallway, kissed it lightly on the forehead, held my breath, and there I did it. I parted with Prada.

Memories can’t hold your makeup, but your first Prada makeup case can’t hold your makeup forever.

RIPrada.