Stash Re-Organization

Mr. Karen went away for the weekend, so I took advantage of his absence to take over the bedroom and re-organize my stash from being stored by brand to being stored by color, as I mentioned last month that I was planning to do one day. I made little tags with each of the groups I thought I'd want (pink, red, coral/orange, yellow, lime, green, teal/turquoise, blue, blue violet, purple, red violet, white/black/grey, brown/skintone/ivory, metal/chrome, duochrome, glitter, holo, sheer), cleared the pillows off the bed, and got to sorting.



Fortunately we have a guest bedroom, because I wasn't able to finish the sorting in one day. If I'd worked straight through, I might have been able to manage, but I think my brain would have melted under the strain of deciding where some of the trickier polishes belonged. It would have been easier if I'd just done it by color, but when I choose polishes to use, I don't go just by color, I also think about whether I want a special effect, like layering or holo, so I thought it made sense to put those types of polishes in their own categories.

My whole collection is now back in the Helmers, though I still want to do some sorting within the categories to make it easier to pull colors for comparison posts and nail wheel swatching. The biggest surprise I got was how many of some colors I have. I expected to use one drawer each for pinks and reds and thought yellows and oranges could share a drawer. Um, not so much. I was amazed to find I needed four drawers for the pinks and reds alone (though two of those aren't completely full), and the oranges took up one whole drawer and spilled into the next, which they share with yellows. I had no idea I had as many pinks and red as I do purples; that seems crazy to me given how very much I like purple.

One drawback I've already found to the new system is that the slightly too tall old school Sally Hansens and Pro 10s now annoy me in multiple drawers instead of just the one for their brands. I may decide to segregate them at some point. Or I may decide I don't like doing it by color as much as I expected and go back to the old way or some other way I haven't thought of yet.