Under wear?

Having an organized closet is the best way to get the most out of it. Reorganizing your clothes makes it easier to get ready in the morning and it reminds you of all the great pieces you haven't seen in awhile because you pushed them to the back of your closet after you got all that new stuff for Christmas. But this doesn't just go for the stuff you wear on the outside for all the world to see. When's the last time you organized your underwear?

A lot of people give up on organization when it comes to underwear because they're so hard to keep folded. Especially if you're a thong girl (guilty). It ends up being a big ball in a drawer and you can never find the ones you want. I decided to tackle my underwear drawer and my bra collection all at once.  When I was done I found a bunch of items I'd forgotten about and made everything easy to see/grab in a rush.

First, I tackled the bras. I have less of them so it seemed like an easier task. I'm not a pro on how to store your bras so they keep their shape but I knew I wanted to organize them in a way that I could see everything all at once. This was my result:

I used two fabric boxes from Ikea because I had some extras, but you can easily do this with a shoe box or two (to make it look pretty cover the box in paper or fabric). I figured the best way to keep the shape of the bra intact was to make sure the cups don't get crushed. It's hard to see in this picture but each bra basically just folds into the other one so that they maintain their curvy shape. Then I stuck the fabric boxes in a drawer  to keep them from prying eyes (lets ignore the fact that I've put a picture of them online).

Next, I moved to underwear which was a bit more difficult. After some brainstorming I decided to empty the tea bags out of the many boxes I have in my kitchen and put them in one big dish (this turned into a project of its own since I decided to make a tea tray but maybe I'll post that tomorrow). I cut the lid off the boxes so I was left with this:

Then I covered the boxes with a funky green construction paper and black electrical tape.

Mine were kind of sloppily covered because you're not really going to get a good look at the inside of them. I just wanted a uniform color. I did this to four boxes and stuck them in another fabric Ikea box, a little larger than the last two (Ikea must have been having a sale on these at some point because I have tons of them). Again, you can use a shoe box or plastic container or just stick the smaller boxes directly in a drawer to get the same effect.

Then I covered a lightening bulb box (the kind that are divided into two sections) with black duck tape. I got some small baskets for $1 at Walgreens and added them to the back half of the box. The final result looks like this:

As I said I'm a thong girl, so I used the four front boxes specifically for them. I tend to match my underwear to my bra (I know I'm weird) so I organized them by color. I used the light bulb box (top right) for my basic black and white thongs. In the baskets (upper left) I folded all my bikini and boy shorts by style (all the plain cotton are together, all the comfy lace pairs are together and all the sexy but not so comfortable pairs are together). Now I can grab the color/style I'm looking for without searching through a ball of fabric. 

As a side note, the easiest way to organize items so that you can see everything you have at once and maximize space is by folding them into little squares and stacking them almost like file folders. This way, instead of having some stuff at the very bottom of the pile or behind other piles everything is showing at once and easy to grab. I did it with the boy shorts in the back and I do the same thing to all my t-shirts and tank tops. 

Now that you've seen all my intimates get to organizing your own!

Cleaning up

I spend most of my days off cleaning and organizing my apartment. I hate clutter and am always finding areas that need to organized and re-organized. So, after spending the morning getting inspired on Pinterist, I took on my bathroom cabinets. Luckily, I have a lot of storage space in my bathroom, especially for such a small apartment. However, more storage space sometimes leads to more of a mess. Our medicine cabinet was completely disorganized with bottles of medicine, boxes of Q-tips and beauty products everywhere. However, when I was finished I was left with this!

I started by tackling the top shelf, which was a mess of asprine bottles, band-aid's, cold pills, etc. I grabbed one of the cloth boxes I bought from Ikea last year and used it to corral everything into one organized space. These boxes weren't expensive but if you don't want to spend money, you can use wrapping paper to cover an old shoe box and make a pretty space to hold all of your health needs. Just make sure the box fits in your medicine cabinet. I grouped like items together in the box so that everything was easy to find. Putting everything in a box you can pull down off the shelf also makes it easier to get to what you need without struggling to see on the top shelf. 

Next I tackled the shelf of beauty products. One of the biggest problems there was the amount of space packaged products were taking up. For instance,  I took the Q-tips out of their box which was taking up most of the shelf and put them in a Tupperware container to save space. Then I took my disposable razors out of their packages and placed them in an old coffee mug that I wasn't using. Finally a took a long plastic tray (a dollar at Walgreens) and put all of my lipsticks, chapsticks and lipglosses inside. I also used a tiny pouch (free with a jewlery purchase at American Eagle) to keep all of my beauty "tools" together (tweezers, nail clippers, nail scissors, etc.) and placed it in the basket. 

Finally, I tackled the rest of my make up which was basically jammed into the plastic drawers on the bottom shelf. It was a disaster trying to find what I needed in the morning. First things first, make sure you go through your makeup and get rid of anything that's old or that you don't use anymore. Then I simply organized each drawer by what part of the face I used the products on. I made an "eye drawer" a "cheek drawer" and a "brush drawer" (I already had a "lip basket"). I fit all my bronzers, blushes, and concealers into the cheek drawer and all my eyeshadows, mascaras and eyeliners into the eye drawer. To keep the eyeliners organized I used another one of the small pouches to hold them together. I put all the different kinds of blush, bronzer, and eye shadow brushes I had in the brush drawer. I used a small case with brush openings to keep all the smaller brushes together since it's easy for them to get all over the place. 

Any smaller lotions or moisturizers  were placed in another small Tupperware on the bottom shelf. Now I have a medicine cabinet I love to look at, and getting ready is 10 times easier in the morning. My organization didn't stop there. In my next post I'll show you how I made hair, nail and even an ironing kit to keep everything together, in reach and easy to transport.