Since my Make-Up Storage post a few months back, I’ve wanted to incorporate a few more organising style posts on the blog. When it comes to certain areas of my life, I’m a little high straightenence. There are a few things that have been frustrating me about my current system, not least my nail crate. I find myself picking through all the bottle handles, trying to find the colour I want, so I figured I’d do something about it.

I favourited this post by lady blogger extraordinaire A Thrifty Mrs a while back. She’s an absolute organising demon. In a good way. I’ve also seen the idea in a few other places in the past. It’s one of those things, not unlike the photos on the front of shoe storage boxes thing, where I instantly thought “OMG! That would make my life so much easier!” I love nail polish, I love labelling, what could be better! I set to work. This is what I started with:

I took all the polishes out of the box and arranged them by brand (I’ll tell you why later). I cleaned the handles of polishes with a baby wipe, just to get rid of any marks or dust. If you have polish spillages on the bottle or cap you may want to wipe that off with a nail polish remover soaked cotton pad. I also took this opportunity to spruce up my claggy polishes by dripping a little remover into the bottle and giving it a good shake. Thins them out a treat.

I used simple address/name labels to make my polish labels. Now I’m the sorta lady that has a lot of labels hanging around the place but you can pick these up for under a pound in WHSmith, Paperchase or the like. I used one big one and one smaller one and that was plenty for my collection of around 25ish polishes. Get your scissors out of the drawer.

So, forgive me, I know this may sound obvious, but you need to dot the polish on to the labels before you stick them on to the bottle caps. I very nearly began the process before realising this. Doh. So, dot your polishes on to the label with ample room to cut between the dots in whatever shape you fancy. My shape of choice is a circle.

This is why you organise the polishes by brand, because if you have lots of similar shades a la moi (I like purple a lot), it can be difficult to keep track of what’s what. If you do it by brand, chances are you’ll remember which dot links to which bottle. Do all the dots for one brand and maybe they’ll have had some time to dry or at least get a little tacky. Wave ‘em around a bit to dry them faster. Cut them out. Peel. Stick them on the top of the corresponding handle. Voila!

There are some brand bottles which make the sticking process a little trickier. Barry M polishes are the dream because they have wide, flat tops, as do a lot of drugstore brands like 17 and Rimmel – Happy Days. Mavala, well that gets a little complicated, Orly is also a little tricky (but doable) and OPI , well I didn’t even both with them. Luckily I only have 4 OPI polishes. For some reason, however I tried to stick the label on or whatever the size or shape of it (I tried strips and dots) the handle is shaped in such a curvy/slanted way that nothing will stick. Alas, those remained blank. I also have some shatter polishes with rounded tops I left blank but they’re distinctive enough anyway.

So I popped them all back in the box and this is what I got:

Yay! Now I can find exactly what I’m looking for, and speedy too! Seriously though, when I instagrammed this bad boy () I got some responses saying “OH I’ve been meaning to do this foreverrrr” etc. Me too. But really, just do it. It is a bit time consuming but it’s very satisfying. It costs next to nothing and I did it in front of the TV while I caught up on vids. A great time was had. Go forth and get your organise on.

Big thanks to A Thrifty Mrs for inspiring me!

How do you store your nail polish? Have you seen any examples of better ways? If so, link me to them in the comments – I love this stuff!