Organizing the Stash

As all makeup junkies know, organizing a makeup stash is essential.  The alternative is to have eyeliners rolling around with lipglosses rolling around with a crappy tube of mascara you bought a decade ago and have been meaning to toss but can never find when you're thinking about it.

Not that I've been there or anything.

So because my husband is awesome, I'm fortunate enough to have the master bathroom all to myself.  I tell people that one of the secrets of my (thus far successful *knock on wood*) marriage is that we have always had separate bathrooms.  Ergo, space shouldn't be much of an issue, and yet it is.  My spouse, who believes that toiletries are items to be tolerated but not enjoyed (tough luck, buster, you're getting a nice shaving set and lip balm for Christmas!) shares a bathroom with our two small sons because together they need less counter space than I, the makeup-obsessed lone female in the family, do.

At least we all know where we stand vis a vis the bathroom situation.

So, on to my organization situation.  There are two rather spacious under-sink cabinets, which are mostly full of bulk toiletries from Costco and a variety of random crap that has slowly accumulated under there for the last six years.  Mostly I don't mind that this space is largely wasted.  It's inconvenient and uncomfortable to bend down there multiple times every morning, so I wouldn't want to store anything there that I'd need on a daily basis.  My one easily accessible bit of built-in storage is a long, shallow drawer between the double sinks, and for years it was good enough.  Granted, I did have those manky old tubes of lipgloss rolling around in the back, and it always took some digging to find my good mascara, but with a small stash of makeup I didn't feel the need to upgrade my storage.

Then I had a second baby, turned thirty, and started caring about cosmetics.  Check out the rest of the blog for the full backstory on all of this.

So my first step after realizing that my growing collection of cosmetics wasn't going to work with my organization-less system, I spent a few minutes browsing around the bathroom organization section of Bed, Bath, and Beyond.  No good.  All of the freestanding units had drawers that were way too deep for easy access to my products, and all of the in-drawer systems were too deep for my shallow drawer.  On my way out, though, I passed through the kitchen section and had an epiphany.  Silverware drawer organizers!

This one doesn't fit perfectly into my drawer, but the space it leaves on the right is narrow enough for me to be able to use it effectively.  One space for eyeliners, one for skincare, one for blushes, two for lipstick/gloss, one for single-color eyeshadows and miscellaneous eye products, and one for foundation and primer.

And yet, even with all that I was still running out of room.  Samples, extra products bought on sale (thankyouverymuch Black Friday), and larger products that had started to accumulate on my countertop but didn't get daily use all needed somewhere that wasn't the black hole of my cabinets.

It's not perfect, but Target had exactly the kind of shallow-drawered (not a word, but I don't care) storage I needed.  The downside here is that it's behind a closet door, and thus subject to neglect/forgetting about, but the upside is that my counter is much cleaner, and I have a drawer just for samples, so that when I run out of a product I know exactly where to look for sample alternatives before I buy again.

What are your makeup organization strategies?