At long last, I will show you my nail polish collection, starting of course with how I store them along with a few tips you might want to pick up yourselves to organize your own collection.
I keep all my nail polishes in this 4 drawer cabinet from Lidl which I bought for €40. You have to assemble it yourself though but it comes with easy to follow instructions and it really doesn't take more than 30 minutes to complete.
The drawers are very deep, perfect to hold even the taller nail polishes such as China Glaze and the likes. I still have to fit the drawers with liners though to stop the nail polishes from moving whenever I open and close a drawer.
My entire collection is divided between the two top drawers. In the first one, I keep all my more expensive polishes such as O.P.I., China Glaze, Essie and Zoya as well as a few drugstore ones that do not fit in the other drawer (you'll soon see why). I also keep all my nail treatments, base coats, top coats and cuticle care stuff in this drawer as well as all my swatch wheels.
I swatch every new polish I get according to the colour onto the respective nail wheels and then I insert it into my nail polish collection database that I keep on my laptop. I categorise the polishes by brand and also take note of the collection and year they came out wherever possible.
In the second drawer, I keep the less expensive and drugstore polishes such as Essence, Catrice, Rimmel, Maybelline, etc... as you can see, this drawer is completely full up and that's why I couldn't fit any more drugstore polishes in it.
How do I know which colour I want without going through them all one by one? Easy! I swatched a dot of the polish on the cap! Here is a little pictorial:
I prefer the Essence bottles though, firstly because they look so nice and colourful and secondly because the colour of the cap reflects the colour of the polish.
The bottom drawers house backups of nail cleaners, sanitizers and other equipment that I use for gel nails so nothing overly exciting. However, if anyone of you would like a post on my home 'nail salon', I would be more than glad to do one after we renovate it completely.
How do you store your polishes? Would you like me to show the polishes by brand or by colour?
That's exactly how I store them too! I use double sided tape on the bottom of the bottles (it stays tacky - so it's great) so that they do not change position or topple from their box with the drawer opening and closing. And mine are colour coded as well starting from nudes to all of the other colours of the rainbow and in between colours! best system I have found so far!
ReplyDeletemarija from www.allthingslady.wordpress.com
love the idea of the double sided tape Marija! thanks for sharing :)
DeleteIf I had mine in draws like that I would forget what I have! How many polishes do you have?
ReplyDeleteI do forget what I have sometimes Misha :p that's why I have a look at the swatch wheels first to decide which colour to wear. currently the total is 186 excluding top coats and base coats...eekkk :S
DeleteI wouldn't feel too bad at that! Last count I did I was at 200 and that was in December, daren't count them now :P
DeleteThat's a great storage idea. How many nail polishes on average fits a drawer?
ReplyDeleteThank you fleurissante :) When it comes to average sized bottles, I managed to fit 133 as for bigger bottles such as China Glaze, I think 80 or so would fit as well :)
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