Do you every get distracted?   Mean to do one thing and then start another totally different thing?  I did that today… and now I have a fully organized hair and make up drawer as a result.  Distraction: not always a bad thing!

This is what I started with:

Gross, huh?  A mish-mash of lipsticks, eye shadows, combs, make up brushes, hair ties, etc., etc. . There was a drawer organizer down there somewhere, but the junk on top hid it.

First thing, I took everything out and divided it into like piles.  Of great importance was the garbage container that I placed in the sink for easy access.

Then it was time to put everything (well, not everything) back.  A fair amount of stuff ended up in the garbage and another bit got transferred to my teenaged daughters.  This drawer was housing all of their hair stuff (barrettes, bobby pins, hair ties, mini elastic bands, clips…).  Not any more.  Now that my girls are older, they tend to keep their own hair stuff in their bedrooms.  My hair is now quite short and I rarely use hair stuff (see above) any more. Why in the world was I allowing all of that stuff to clutter up my drawer?  Gone.

To make my eye make up brushes, eye liners and mascaras easily accessible I looked as far as my spice cupboard.

Tacky?  Maybe. Who knows, maybe I will spray paint the tin and add a decorative paper label some day.  Not today.  Once they were placed in the narrow space left over after the drawer organizer was in place, I didn’t even notice the labels.  Another thing, once I put the brushes in the drawer, there were a couple that were a bit too tall to stand upright.  No problem.  I just used wire cutters to trim a little off of the handle and then sanded them into a rounded end, which I then repainted using dark fingernail polish.  Easy fix.

The rest of my quickie organizing project consisted of placing like items together, utilizing my drawer organizer and a couple of dollar store containers.  Looks MUCH better, doesn’t it?

Make Up Drawer Organizing 101 Summary:

* Empty everything out of your drawer

* Toss out/move/give away what you don’t use any more. (I tried on every single lipstick to make sure they were keepers.)

*  If you don’t have a drawer organizer, get a simple silverware drawer organizer (not the kind with the spoon shapes).

* Put like items with like items.

* For heaven’s sake, don’t put anything back in the drawer that you will not use.

* CLASS FINAL:  Jump up right now and organize a drawer.  Any drawer.  Time yourself, start to finish and just for fun, take before and after pictures.  I want to see!

Sometimes we think that a project is too gigantic to do and so we don’t even start it.  I have learned over the years that the only way to get a project done is to dive…right…in.  Plain and simple.  Get started.  The pride of a job well done is well worth the 25 minutes that I spent reorganizing this drawer.  That is why I think it is great to get distracted sometimes… I have an absolutely organized drawer now.

(Don’t have a drawer that can be used solely for make up and hair stuff?  Stay tuned… I can help with that, too!)