Nail Polish Storage

Hey everyone! I'm officially on Spring Break and so NikkisNailFiles as a YouTube channel is now "live" (is that the right word? Probably not...) and I've posted my first video! Yay! It's kind of boring but it's all about how I store and organize my 300+ bottles of nail polish. If you'd rather watch the video then you can check it out on YouTube, otherwise you can just read through this post and get the same general idea.

What I use to contain my nail polishes is an Ikea Helmer that the boyfriend bought me either 1 or 2 years ago for Christmas. He knew that I needed a different storage thing than my multiple plastic bins so he surprised me with it and seriously I love it. It's sold at Ikea for $39.99 and it comes in three different color choices. Honestly, it's definitely the best way to store nail polishes if you don't have actual salon rack. The helmer has 6 drawers with spots for labels if you'd like to add them (I did although they aren't in the picture) and the drawers fit every single bottle of polish perfectly. The tallest bottles I own are my Finger Paints polishes but even they fit perfectly. Also, I would definitely recommend purchasing a roll of grip liner from Target or wherever to line the bottom of each drawer so your polishes don't slip and slide all over the place. Liners are super cheap (<$5) and you can even find them at the dollar store. I bought just plain cream with grooves but there are also actual adhesive liners and liners with patterns too.

The drawers can be organized any way that suits you. I've seen other nail bloggers organize theirs by brand, color, finish, collection/year, but I just do mine by color and then by brand within each color. My top drawer contains all random items, my detailer/design brushes, top coats/base coats, nail treatments, nail accessories, paintbrushes, my Konad stamper, some Sally Hanson Salon Effects, and my cuticle lotion.

Ikea unfortunately doesn't make dividers for the Helmer so I had to come up with my own way to separate things. I used a shoe box and separated my top coats, base coats, and nail treatments from my really thin detailer polishes (the detailer brushes ALWAYS would fall down if I left them with the rest of my polishes).

The rest of my polishes stay in the 2nd through 5th drawers. I sort them by color and then by brand within the drawers. There's not much to say about those so I'll just put the pictures.

The last drawer has fresh cotton balls, a pouch with my Konad and BundleMonster plates, and some nail enamel spray. I used to keep my polish remover in the bottom drawer but I ran out of that polish and the new one I bought leaks if it's stored horizontal.

The nail wheels are probably one of my favorite things about my entire collection. It helps with deciding which colors would look nice in a design, what pair of colors work for tips, and just to help me decide what color to paint my nails when no polish is really jumping out at me.

This is how I store my nail polishes! Comment below and tell me how you store yours!