How I organize my polish collection

July 10,  2011

I don't know about anyone else, but I love to be organized. The past month I have been researching ways to organize and store polish. Currently, my collection is relatively small compared to the majority of you (I only have 185 polishes). I know that as time passes, my collection will grow. So the main objective was to develop a storage option that I can grow into.  The past couple of days I have been organizing my polish collection, and I thought I would share my solution. I wanted a "system" that allowed me to see all of my polish options as well as a way to quickly locate the polish I wanted for a specific design. How do you organize your collection? I would love to hear your solution. 

This post is mainly for the other nail bloggers, so for the none polish obsessed people, don't judge me and my obsession.... hahaha.... =)

Sorry some of the photos are bad quality. It is hard to take pictures of things like this. Too many things for the camera to focus on, which results in bad quality photos.

I bought these plastic stackable storage containers from my local dollar store (Family Dollar), but you can buy these anywhere. I paid $20 for two of the larger drawers and one of the small drawers. That's a total of $40 for my current unit. As my collection grows, I can purchase more drawers. 

On the top of my storage unit, I have a container that resembles a hat box. I purchased this from Hobby Lobby (a craft store) for $10. 

Inside the box, I store items such as polish remove, nail art wheels, nail polish remover clothes, q-tips, etc. 

If you noticed in the first picture, I have labels on the outside of the drawers. Since my polish collection is small right now, I have multiple colors in the same drawer. As my collection grows, I can change the labels and resort the polish into other drawers. The labels make it easy for me to locate certain colors quickly.

Inside each drawer I have bins to separate the colors (a set of 3 bins was $1). 

In the smaller drawers at the top of the unit, I store items such as nail art pens, nail stickers, stamping plates, etc. 

Each polish I own, I swatch on a color wheel. This way I know EVERY color option I have.

So here is my system that allows me to find a color quickly. I swatch the color on the associated color wheel. Each "color group" has its own number system. For example, All blues start with number 1 and keeps going forever. All greens start with the number 1 and so forth. Then I have labels on each polish that is associated with the number on the wheel. 

And last, I hate it when I find a polish that I like, but can't remember if I own it or not. This will be really significant as my polish collection grows. So I track each polish I own in an excel spreadsheet. I can check the sheet before I purchase a polish to make sure I do not own it. 

This system was time consuming to implement at first. But now that it is set up, it will be easy to add to it as I purchase new polishes. I love having the color wheel because it helps me pick out colors quickly.