Reorganized make up, beauty & clothes

The past few weeks I’ve been obsessed with decluttering videos and Konmari style organization tips. I’ve been watching many videos on Youtube and I love keeping my things organized. I like having an overview and for a while I have felt my make up collection had begun to become too cluttered and messy. I also felt my stack of t-shirts needed reorganizing and there were a few other sections, mostly inside drawers and behind closed doors that I felt needed the once over. But once I got started, I felt I could tackle a few other sections as well. I managed to take before and after pictures of the main areas I wanted to tackle, so I figured it would make a great blog post.

Ta-dah! My reorganized make up drawer. I also reorganized two hair care drawers, two other drawers with beauty products, my shelf with t-shirts, my underwear drawer and my nail polish collection. I started by sorting through my belongings and throwing things away. I got rid of quite a bit of make up (see the last picture in this post), a garbage bag filled with clothes and 2 handfuls of nail polishes. Because any round of organizing starts with purging your things.

Like I said at the start of this post, I watched a lot of make up collection and make up decluttering videos on Youtube. I also spent quite some time seeing people use the KonMari method for reorganizing their belongings. Now, I didn’t really stick to the principles of the latter ‘method’ as I am a pretty neat and organized person to begin with, I just wanted to be smarter about how I stored a few things. I ended up paying a visit to IKEA. After a browse online and looking in other home stores for the perfect solution for storing mainly my make up in a more clever way, I kept coming back to the Godmorgon series combined with some Skubb drawer liners. My main goal: to fit all of my make up into one single drawer of my MALM chest of 4 drawers.

Godmorgon Transparent box with compartments

I didn’t really see this Godmorgon series in too many of the make up organization Youtube videos, but I had decided I needed something new to line the one drawer in my MALM 4-drawer set to keep things organized. Before, I used the discontinued Anordna drawer liners and I felt the Gormorgon series offered the solution I needed: higher, more compartmentalized storage that can be stacked or at the very least layered. The first thing I opted for was this box with different compartments. The front bit can move and be lifted up and out if need be.

Godmorgon transparent box with lid set of 5

I got two of these 5 set box sets as they come with a lid, they are great for keeping products separated, while also allowing you to stack other things on top. Because the boxes are clear you can always see within the blink of an eye were all your things are and you can easily lift these up and out of any drawer.

Godmorgon transparent storage unit set of 3

These drawer inserts seemed handy, but when I got them, I wasn’t sure yet how I’d use them. I ended up using them to layer and put them on top of some of the transparent boxes you see above.

Godmorgon transparent storage with compartments

The final transparent storage solution I got was this, but I really only wanted the little drawer inserts. They seemed handy to me for putting away little things such as hair clips and ties. The idea of these is that you hang these from the sides of your drawer and thus you will always have easy access.

Skubb white box set of 6

The Skubb boxes have been a favorite of mine for lining drawers. I use them to store beauty products, hair brushes, socks: you name it. I seem to have one in almost every drawer. Ever since I reorganized my entire home last winter, I have been keeping my socks in these Skubb boxes underneath my dresses inside my wardrobe and I thought it worked fabulously. That’s why I bought some more boxes and decided to use them to help store my t-shirts and underwear.

On to the before and after pictures!

Make up organization before (above) and after (below)

I took the before pictures after I had already sorted through my make up collection the night before. Before reorganizing this, I kept my lip products in a separate drawer, used the Anordna drawer liners which are very shallow and struggled keeping a few areas organized, yet accessible. I used most of the Godmorgon pieces I bought to reorganize this. The only parts I didn’t use were the ‘cross’ shaped divider and a few of the boxes from one of the lidded box sets I got.

Make up collection before

Make up collection after

In the bigger organizer, with the moving tray, I ended up storing foundation, my favorite blushes, highlighters and bronzers, my extra lipsticks, lipglosses, different types of lipstick (pencils, liquid, etc.), concealers and other highlighters, face powders, primers and bronzers. I stored my remaining blushes in the compartment left void by the organization units. I used the two bigger boxes with a lid. One for small eyeshadow palettes and another for my cream and single eye shadows. A long rectangular box was used for small high end palettes and two of the square boxes were used for gel eyeliners and highlight eyeshadow shades.

Beauty drawers (after)

Finally, I used the three trays to store my favorite lipsticks, brow products, favorite pencil liners and some of my every day products. I filled up the rest of the drawer with my larger eyeshadow palettes and repurposed some of the spaces now freed by moving my lip products to this drawer in the drawer below and above this one. There isn’t a huge change visible in the area where I keep my brushes, but I also moved some things around and now only keep a container with extra eyeliners (colors, liquids, jumbo pencils, etc.) up top. I even managed to move my every day products such as mascara and eyeshadow base into one of the clear drawer sets on top, as well as all of my extra brushes.

Haircare products before (left) and after (right)

I then went through all of my hair products. I threw out a bunch of hair clips, hair ties and the like. I don’t think it’s likely I’ll be wearing butterfly hair clips any time soon and I finally parted ways with my excessive hair band collection. That left me with more room for hair products. I now store my every day and opened hair products in the top drawer. Leaving room for hair brushes and back up products in the drawer below.

T-shirt before and after (above), underwear before and after (below)

Only one part of my wardrobe was driving me crazy and that was my shelf with t-shirts. It was just a hassle to put things back or taking anything out and therefore there were shirts I hardly ever wore, because I simply couldn’t find them quickly. I now have a big Skubb box with neutral shirts and one with printed shirts. One of the rectangular Skubb boxes is used to organize colored shirts and long sleeves and another one is used for tank tops. I used the KonMari method for folding these (but I already used this method for my pants and jeans long before the KonMari craze started, so I guess I had already figured it out by myself).

My underwear drawer was quite messy as you could see, and there were plenty of items I had a hard time reaching in this section. I originally kept bandeau tops, which I really only use as underwear under sheer shirts or low cut tops in the back of my t-shirt shelf. But now I could move them into my underwear drawer. I also divided up my panties, had more or at least better room for my under shirts, dresses, skirts and pants that I use to layer under sheer clothing. All in all, it made for a neatly organized drawer.

Reorganized nail polish collection

But after reorganizing my make up, I was left with 4 drawer liners that I didn’t want to throw out. Since I was on a roll, I decided to also sort through my nail polish collection. And then it hit me: I can use the drawer liners to organize my nail polish. So I got rid of a few so it would fit and behold a much more organized nail polish stash. Just compare it to this post I did last year and you’ll see what I mean. It makes for such a big change now nothing can slide around anymore.

Make up I am giving away

So what is the end result you may ask? Well for the make up, this is all I am getting rid of. I also got rid of some nail polish of course, but I put it all in a bag and I am giving it away to friends and family. I have some cousins who are really into make up too and I’m sure they will be thrilled to try a few of these things out. It has also inspired me to do a make up I regret buying blog post and so that will be coming up in the next few weeks.

What do you think of my reorganized make up stash?