How I Organize Nail Polish

Today I went through and got my polish collection in order at last; I had it organized a few months ago (kinda-sorta) but I’ve been acquiring so much polish over the past few months that things had gotten really out of hand.  Check out how I got my stash together.

This idea was completely inspired by The Beauty Department’s DIY polish box post. They have some great tutorials as well as organizational tips. Their storage box  idea is really cute, but I have way too many lacquers for something like that. Besides, I have a Melmer.

On to the organization project….

First I got my hands on some white Avery address labels. These are sold just about everywhere; pick some up the next time you’re at Office Depot or Wal-Mart. Any white labels will do really – I went with white instead of clear since most polishes use black caps and I wanted a “pure” color swatch.

Once you have your labels line up your lacquers and carefully swatch each color in a small square (check out my first photo) and then leave it to dry. Once the swatches are ready take your hole puncher and cut out a circle from each swatch – now you have a perfectly round label to fit on the top of your polish cap! This is great for people like me who store polish in a drawer and usually have an aerial view of their collection.

As you can see this is going to make hunting through my stash much quicker and easier. I was really surprised to discover how many neutral/nude/putty polishes I’ve acquired! I love those shades but I hadn’t realized just how many I own (and how similar many of them are to each other…)

What do ya’ll think? How do you keep your polish collections looking bright and beautiful?