Beauty,  Lifestyle,  Skincare

The Great Makeup Reorganization of 2017

It’s always nice to get a fresh start in the new year, and this year I decided to kick it off with a bang – with a gigantic reorganization of my makeup collection!! As you have probably guessed… I have a LOT of makeup. This post will probably be pretty lengthy!!

Moving was the perfect time to do this reorganization too because it also allowed me to go through and toss a bunch of stuff! I tried to be pretty liberal here – I got rid of anything that was almost empty, hadn’t been used in more than a few months, or that I just didn’t like. I have so many makeup products that I’ll probably never be able to go through the ones that I love…why waste space with things that I don’t care for? I’ll probably go through AGAIN and be even more harsh, but that’s a job for a different day.

Anyway, to start off my makeup reorganization, I separated everything I owned into categories – eyes, face, hair, lips, shower stuff, etc.

categories.png

My little piles were great because they allowed me to see exactly what I had and start organizing. Here, my hair stuff and eye stuff piles:

I ended up tossing a lot too! I haven’t officially written a December empties post yet but I do have a LOT of stuff that I got rid of, so I’ll probably have to do that soon. I didn’t take a lot of pics while I was sorting stuff but I for some reason chose to take a pic of my nail polish haha so I crossed off which ones I decluttered. So here’s that.

nail declutter.png

Once everything was pared down a little bit, I was able to decide where everything would go! Prior to moving, I had all my stuff in little bags and containers under our bathroom sink. But in our new home, we have less bathroom counter space. My makeup had to find a better home. Luckily we have more storage space in our bedroom, so after some hunting around, I found a beautiful set of drawers from Ikea that looked perfect to house everything. They’re the ALEX drawers that a lot of beauty youtubers use. I saw them specifically recommended by jambeauty89.

ebwfegx

So my available spaces were my ALEX drawers, the cabinets under the sink, and the countertop next to the sink. I also had a few organizy things to use – some GLEVE drawer organizers from Ikea with tiny boxes that could be separated (I got 2), a clear organizer from Target, and a pink cube also from Target. Obviously the goal here was to keep the counter as clear as possible, so I had to fit as much as possible underneath my sink or in the drawers.

Here’s how everything turned out!

ALEX Drawers

alex.png

Top:

top

Since the drawers are kind of my bedside table as well as the makeup storage, I wanted to keep bedtime necessities there without making it feel cluttered. So on top there’s some non-makeup items as well! We have:

The drawers were probably the hardest part for me to organize, because I couldn’t decide how to split everything up!

Top drawer – brushes & tools:

brushes

I used the top drawer for all my brushes and various tools. This is one set of the GLEVE drawer organizers and it works perfectly for all my stuff. This drawer contains all the brushes that are not in my brush roll (which you’ll see later in the post) – I have my favorite brushes in there but I also like to switch them out as I clean them or just over time so none of them get worn out too quickly.

In the top left here I have face brushes, kabuki brushes in the middle, top right is sponges (normally my Beauty Blender is in there too), bottom right is eye brushes, and bottom left is kinda everything else – false lash applicator, sharpeners, a puff, and an extra compact mirror. A lot of these are from sets that I broke up – one of the things I like to do before buying expensive brushes is get cheaper big sets of brushes from Amazon (like this one or this one). That way I can figure out what types of brushes I use frequently and like a lot so I know what to invest in and spend the big bucks on 🙂

Second drawer – lip products:

lips

This is probably the drawer that needs a little more work…haha. This big container is from the second set of GLEVE organizers. I could probably use one more set of those to separate everything in this drawer a little further. In the top left corner I have all my lip balms, a LUSH lip scrub, all those lipcare type of things. The top right inside the Sephora Play bag is all my bullet lipsticks. Then across the bottom on the left I have my lip liners, and all the rest are liquid lipsticks 😮 We can see how much of a problem I have in this department hahah

Middle drawer – eye products:

eyesdrawer.png

In here I have all of my palettes, eyeliners, mascara, single eyeshadows, and lashes. I used one tiny drawer from the GLEVE set to keep all the tiny things together. The one package of lashes looks like it’s empty because I was wearing them that day haha. This is the drawer I hope to make the most progress on this year, because I have so many palettes to go through and I’d love to make a dent in some of them.

Fourth drawer – skincare/face products:

facedrawer.png

This drawer could also probably use some work and further organizing haha. In here I have all of my skincare products and also any face makeup. I have a bunch of GLEVE drawers in here and also one of my old Target Beauty Boxes to separate everything so it’s not all rolling around together.

In the front is basically big and small face products – the front two drawers are all blushes, concealers, foundations, powders, and primers. The box on the right in the middle is mostly samples or very small products. The middle left is all face masks:

masks

and then in the back there’s various skincare items, a few of the Urban Decay setting sprays, and some backups of the Mizon snail cream that I love!

Bottom drawer – hair products:

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Almost done! This one could use some reorganizing too lol but here I have all my hair products, including hair ties, hairspray, tools and all hair products except for like shampoo and conditioner…those have a different home. That Sephora bag contains all the stuff I’ve gotten out of beauty boxes, like hair masks and samples of things. In the back is my hair dryer and the 3 (?!) curling irons that I for some reason own.

That’s all for the ALEX drawers…moving on to the bathroom!

Countertop:

oncounter

So this is my countertop. It looks like a lot, but I wish I had taken a before pic at my old apartment because this is a SIGNIFICANT improvement over what it used to be! Here I have my little clear organizer with my frequent/current skincare and hair things, and the ones that didn’t fit are right next to it. I also have the vitamins that I take every day and my old faithful UD setting spray. In front of it is my makeup bag which holds all my everyday makeup, and then you can also see my (dirty) beauty blender by the sink too haha

brushes-and-bag

As I mentioned earlier, my frequently used brushes are stored in my brush roll which you can see is the pink thing under my makeup bag here. It’s normally kept in my bathroom drawer but I took them all out to wash them in this pic. The pink thing on the top right is a BrushEgg, basically a little silicone thing that helps in cleaning brushes (spoiler: I love it).

A peek inside my makeup bag:

in-makeup-bag

Under the Sink:

undersink

Here I have any loose items that didn’t really fit into other things – medicines there in the back, some q-tips, a sugar scrub, nail polish remover, and a few bags containing other things like nail polish, sun care, and lotions:

This is just the first portion, to the right of this is the pink cube I spoke about earlier:

incube

This contains a few more empty bags and mostly shampoo and shower stuff – that Ariel bag in the middle contains like 50 shampoos and conditioners from Disney hotels we’ve stayed at…I pretty much never need to buy shower products again lol

And that’s everything! It took a long time but I am honestly so happy with my newly organized stash. I think like I said I will go through one more time and see what else I can get rid of. One of my goals for this year is to spend less on makeup and use more of what I already have, and I think now that I’ve purged a lot and reorganized it I can really focus on doing that. I hope you enjoyed reading about my makeup organization and maybe even got some ideas 🙂

<3 , Kaela

PS: This post contains affiliate links, meaning for each click or purchase made through the links in this post, I will receive a small (very small!) percentage of that purchase. My full disclaimer can be found on my about page🙂

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