How to Organize Nail Polish

Out of all the beauty products, I spend the most is on nail polish. Ever since college, I've developed a habit of painting my nails. Mainly it's for stress relief because I have to be careful and paint every stroke patiently. Of coz in early days, I just didn't pay attention to the quality and only on colors. As I grow older, I am getting more picky about the things I use, so for nail polish, I only buy from certain brands like OPI, Essie, Butter London, and I start to accumulate a lot. Each polish will expire in about 2 years, so this year I look at my inventory and be reminded the colors I have and be careful when I buy another bottle of nail polish. But how can I possibly keep track all of them??? Let me show you what I've done. 

Materials I've used:

• 2 Acrylic Shoe Drawers from the Container Store - $7.99/each 
• Nail Wheels from Sally's - $5.39 with beauty club card 
• Round color coding labels from Daiso - $1.50
• A fine sharpie pen

Step 1: Color code all your nail polish.

I grouped them by the same color scheme or at least in the shades that made sense to me. I painted the lightest shades starting from the left of the nail wheel and darker towards to the right. Nail wheels are great because they help you to decide what color to use if you want to color coordinate with your outfit. And you don't need to open the nail polish bottle and test it, so helps to prolong your nail polish from drying out. 

Step 2: Make labels

I used label stickers from Daiso and used a fine sharpie pen to label them and sticked to the back of the nail wheel.

To make it easier to look up a nail polish after looking at the nail wheel, I also placed a label to the brush head. Tedious process but you will not regret it once you are all done. It's easy for me now to cross reference the nail wheel to the nail polish without taking it out of the drawer. Depending on how you store your nail polish, you may place the labels differently. 

Step 3: Store them

I bought 2 women shoe drawers from the container store. They also carry a bigger size for men's shoes but this works just fine as they are stackable. The acrylic is quite sturdy, so I don't have a problem pulling them in and out. If you own Essie nail polish, it holds about 45 of them. For OPI, it's about 32. I just store them based on the color scheme instead of sorting them by brands. It's just all based on how you like to sort them.

The shoe drawers are so compact and I like how they can stack on top of each other. I thought about using those nail polish racks used in the nail salons. But I have to find a wall to hang them and it doesn't look great in the bedroom. They aren't cheap either. The ones I saw on ebay or Amazon are around $30-40 plus shipping. Yikes. I only spent $18 on this and can hold all of them.  

If you've seen my earlier nail polish organization by using a spice rack, I still use it for storing the most frequently use shades, base and top coat, and glitter nail polish.

I hope this inspires you to organize your nail polish collection. Have a great week, everyone!