Organizing Your House Week Three

Guys, it’s house cleaning central over here these days. I’m a cleaning / organizing / tidying fool, and I’ll tell you what: my house has never looked better.

If you’re new to this challenge, let me catch you up to speed. This year I’m tackling one organizing project at a time in my house, in an effort to help my life become more tidy and simplified.

In the end simplification + tidiness = happier everyone.

Read the beginning of the project Organizing Your House One Week At A Time here, and Organizing Your House Week Two here. Then come back, and we’re about to get all tackle-y in here in Organizing Your House Week Three.

Are you ready to jump on the bandwagon? Please say yes. There’s strength in numbers, I really believe that to be true, and I’d really love you on my team. It keeps us all accountable to know there’s someone, somewhere out there, doing the same fun cleaning + organizing extravaganza.

And it is FUN, I can assure you of that! Even if my idea of fun has shifted a bit in my more *cough* mature years. A Friday night sorting and organizing old makeup? Sign me up!

So, I missed a couple of weeks of this house organizing project in February because life got too nuts, but I’m back and better than ever. Let’s get started.

This week’s Organizing Your House Objective: Bathroom Drawer / Makeup Vanity

The last challenge, Organizing Your House Week Two I organized my bathroom vanity, but only one side. It was too much to do the whole thing at once, so I separated the vanity into quadrants, and this week is the second part: the makeup vanity.

The makeup drawer was a hot mess of broken eyeliner pencils, a pair of floating false eyelashes (I couldn’t make that up if I’d tried) nail polish, and an assorted mix of travel toiletries. UGH.

How-To Organize Your Bathroom Drawer / Makeup Vanity

Step 1: Pull everything out and see what you’ve got

In my case it was random fake eyelashes (I can’t even tell you when I wore them) a whole bunch of random out of date makeup I don’t use, and a whole lot of dust.

Step 2: Sort

I sorted the makeup into piles: eyeshadow, eyeliner, mascara, makeup brushes, lipstick, lip gloss, foundation, blush, highlighter, bronzer, and makeup compacts.

Step 3: Clean + Tidy

The organizing compartments in the vanity from IKEA, which I HIGHLY recommend using (or any sort of organizing compartments) were filthy dirty. So I pulled them out, washed them in hot soapy water, and hand dried before putting them back into a cleaned + disinfected drawer.

SO much better. Phewsies.

Step 4: Put it back

Organize your stuff in the drawer or cupboard in a way that makes sense to you. In my case it made sense for me to organize my makeup by the way it fits into the organizer. I put makeup brushes together, eyeliners on another side, then bigger makeup compacts underneath the compartment.

The foundation, lipstick, lip gloss, and stick eyeshadow went in separate sections, as did the blush + highlighter. Eyeshadow went in its own little place, each compact on its side to make room for more colors. I love the way it looks now. I can actually find what I’m looking for, and I’m wearing makeup I’d forgotten I owned!

Step 5: Recycle / Donate / Toss

Remember those piles you made when you were sorting? (see Step 2) Now’s the time to actually donate or toss. Be brutal. Remember my organizing motto: what would you pay to ship across the world if you were moving next week? My guess is not a lot.

My daughter happened to get very lucky the day I organized my makeup, but I tossed a fair amount of expired junk + recycled containers of things I didn’t want anymore.

Doesn’t the end result look + feel better?

Just for reference here are the before and after photos of my makeup drawer:

I can breathe so much easier now.

What about you? What organizing projects will you tackle this week around your house?

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Allison

Hello there! I'm Allison Czarnecki, founder + editor of Petit Elefant, a blog all about style on a budget for every part of your life: style / home / travel / family. I do a lot of how-to beauty + style tutorials, travel posts, easy recipes, home remodel projects, and cool DIY crafts you totally want to try. I'm super happily married (to a hot Polish immigrant) and am the mother of two kids, a daughter and son, all of whom are featured here on the regular. We live in the country but we're a little bit rock + roll. Welcome!