How do you store your nail polish collection?

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I found this picture of how I used to store them before I built my racks and bought my Melmers.  As this grew I started taking over the entire shelving unit to the right filling it up and it was so dark I had them like 15 deep and I could NEVER see what I was looking for.  My collection was so cute back then.  This was April of 2013.  I now have 944 at last count.  That's 5 completely full Melmer draws and 4 full wall racks. 



 
Anyone here with that has a Helmer.. can you tell me how well made the drawers are?  I have a "Melmer" and one of my drawers is bowing out the bottom significantly and it's not even filled up with bottles.  I realize these things were not meant to hold that much weight but I had hoped to at least fill each drawer up.  I am running out of space.  My collection has gained around 800 polishes from when I first started collecting again almost a year ago.  I am working on the wall racks but I hadn't planned on putting all 1100 polishes on the wall.  Maybe not even half that.  I loved the Melmer while it lasted and am incredibly disappointed it's failing on me now.

 
I have all of my polished stored in a Helmer, organized by brand. It's the best solution I have found. I'm not a huge fan of the wall shelves because I have a variety of brands and OCD, so it always looks so cluttered to me :/

 
I'm still loving my Swivel Stores, but I can never decide 100% if I prefer to sort by color or by brand. I love how they look so neat when stored by brand, but I also want to have a good visual on potential dupes to compare and see if they are similar on the nail or only in the bottle. I was thinking lately maybe I'll store my Trieds by brand and my Untrieds by color, since I store them separately. I did build a little tiered set of shelves out of Birchboxes and a Glossybox today for fun. It's not pretty, but it's currently holding 50 bottles quite nicely. I have enough boxes to make another. I was thinking of putting Untrieds in them and keeping my Swivel Stores for Trieds that I'm keeping (if I won't wear them again they go for trade or to friends).

 
I have the commercial rack for sinful nail polish that held 72 colors, 6 deep that is completely full of opi, essie, and loreal bijou nail(best nail polish ever!) and i have several totes that have even more. I'm looking to get an opi waterfall tower soon so i can see all the colors better.

 
Thrift shopping today was a huge success.  I got 2 wooden spice racks for less than $20.  I also picked up a spinning organizer/caddy from Goodwill for $5.00 and I plan on putting all my supplies in there or maybe even just the polishes I access the most for stamping/nail art.  It's fairly large and I am sure I will find a use for it some places.  (I will upload pic of it later my photostream is acting up.

new racks.jpg

I plan on painting the racks white.  I may leave them though.. they are kind of vintage to me.  The taller one looks homemade.  I can just picture some handy husband making his doting wife spice racks for the kitchen where she treats the family to pies and cookies.

 
Thrift shopping today was a huge success.  I got 2 wooden spice racks for less than $20.  I also picked up a spinning organizer/caddy from Goodwill for $5.00 and I plan on putting all my supplies in there or maybe even just the polishes I access the most for stamping/nail art.  It's fairly large and I am sure I will find a use for it some places.  (I will upload pic of it later my photostream is acting up.

new racks.jpg

I plan on painting the racks white.  I may leave them though.. they are kind of vintage to me.  The taller one looks homemade.  I can just picture some handy husband making his doting wife spice racks for the kitchen where she treats the family to pies and cookies.
That is a fantastic find!
 
I have mine in a vintage wooden crate meant to hold grapes.  It works well because it's a decent size and has short sides so I can see them all from the top, but with my recent Zoya order I now don't have enough space.  I think I'm around 200 polishes now.  I'd like to get some shelve like Christa just posted!

 
A little advice needed... and I bet you ladies will have the answer! I've seen mixed reviews on storing nail polish on its side, but I recently bought an old 60-drawer library card catalog and was thinking that it would be the perfect way to store/organize my polishes, since I'm not worried about displaying them. I mean, each color could have its own drawer! Or alphabetical brands! And the drawers would be labeled all cutely, library-style, for easy access! But OPI polish bottles just barely fit when closing the drawers, so anything taller would have to end up on its side.

 
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After putting polish on the shelf I think I am going to end up painting it.  I want to do white shelves with the backboard light gray to match the paint on the walls.  I think the way they are is way too dark.  Here is my Sally Hansen Insta-Dri collection. 

IMG_6913.JPG

 
A little advice needed... and I bet you ladies will have the answer! I've seen mixed reviews on storing nail polish on its side, but I recently bought an old 60-drawer library card catalog and was thinking that it would be the perfect way to store/organize my polishes, since I'm not worried about displaying them. I mean, each color could have its own drawer! Or alphabetical brands! And the drawers would be labeled all cutely, library-style, for easy access! But OPI polish bottles just barely fit when closing the drawers, so anything taller would have to end up on its side.
I think the issue is that it can actually leak into the cap and if it dries you can't get them off.  I've ruined a bottle or two that way when I used to store the in a plastic shoe box.  I am also super OCD so now that I really care about them, the idea drives me insane.  I get annoyed when they are not all facing the same direction.   I love your storage solution and can't wait to see it when it's done.  Maybe you can get another storage for the taller ones.

 
I bought plastic nail polish racks online. They go in my closet. My thing is I have to have all my polish on display or I will forget about some and never use them.

 
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I bought my first helmer (red) over the weekend!  It was a fun and easy little project putting it together with my boyfriend.  You definitely have to be careful when you pull the drawers out once they're full since there's no drawer catch at the back to keep it from just coming all the way out.  But I'm loving it so far!

 
I'm so envious of all these cool displays everyone has!  Mine just sits on an organizer space.. lol  One of these days I'd like to get a rack for the wall to display all of mine.

 
I think the issue is that it can actually leak into the cap and if it dries you can't get them off.  I've ruined a bottle or two that way when I used to store the in a plastic shoe box.  I am also super OCD so now that I really care about them, the idea drives me insane.  I get annoyed when they are not all facing the same direction.   I love your storage solution and can't wait to see it when it's done.  Maybe you can get another storage for the taller ones.
Ah, yes, good point... and I also saw someone mention that the brushes can dry out if they wind up exposed in a bottle that's not full enough to cover the brush when lying flat. I think what I need to do is get my handyman dad to help me figure out how to put together some kind of little angled rack type of thing to go in the drawers, so the bottles can be at a bit of an angle... that way I could see the colors easily at a glance, while avoiding the problems of laying them flat. And I'll definitely share a pic when I've got it all finished! :) /emoticons/[email protected] 2x" width="20" height="20" />

 
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I think what I need to do is get my handyman dad to help me figure out how to put together some kind of little angled rack type of thing to go in the drawers, so the bottles can be at a bit of an angle... that way I could see the colors easily at a glance, while avoiding the problems of laying them flat. And I'll definitely share a pic when I've got it all finished! :)
You can do it yourself.  You just need weather stripping tape, strips of wood and a hand saw to cut the wood to the correct length.

I modified this idea for drawer dividers from family handyman. http://www.familyhandyman.com/storage-organization/easy-organization/view-all#step4  I just put the strips of wood in at an angle instead of straight.

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So many good ideas in here! My collection isn't huge (maybe 50 or so) but I need to organize. It's currently all just thrown in a sephora box from an online order. Something I keep meaning to do but never get around to is to organize it!

 

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