Long hair or short, lip gloss girl or full on face femme, chances are you have a host of makeup and hair supplies sitting around your house and not exactly in any particular order. Don’t worry, we’ve all been guilty of this at one point in time but, ask yourself a question, you would not store your pants with your tops so why would you throw your hair dryer in with your stash of lipstick? When it comes to your bathroom counters and bedroom vanities you should avoid the hair rising shenanigans that your cosmetics and hair care can cause. Here are five easy and effective ways to organize your beauty and hair supplies.

Out with the Old Products

When you’re unorganized it’s pretty easy to keep things that you really don’t need or just don’t use at all. Most likely, you have a favorite makeup applicator or hair brush and there are even greater chances that they aren’t in the condition they use to be in. It doesn’t have to be edible to have an expiration date which means, yes, even your makeup expires so be sure to check to see if you have any outdated cosmetics sitting around. If you do, throw them out. If you haven’t used a certain makeup in the last three to five months it is likely that you won’t again, so go ahead and toss that as well. However, if you have any makeup that you haven’t opened and don’t have the inkling to ever use it, pass it off to a fellow girlfriend. The great thing about this step is that not only does it help you sort out your beauty supplies but it also promotes good hygiene.

Same thing goes for your hair tools such as curling irons and hair dryers. If you have a curling iron or even straightening iron that has began to rust/brown around the plate due to accumulation of hair products burning, get rid of them. It isn’t always as obvious to when it’s time to throw out your hair dryer but a good sign would be the constant sound of buzzing or wavering that can be heard during use or a burning smell.

Storing Your Beauty Supplies

Providing storage for your things is a key step to getting organized and staying organized. Designate a drawer for your stick products that can include eye liner, lip liner, mascara, eye brow pencil and lipstick. Invest in a vanity set that can be used separately from your mirror that you can hang on your wall that is designated for just hair supplies. Drawers and stands for makeup will help eliminate clutter and free up much needed counter space. Get creative with this step as it can easily be made into a DIY project. Use a salt and pepper shaker to hold things such as bobby pins and hair clips or get a plastic shoe rack to hang over your door. This is a great place to put large hair supplies that might not fit in the vanity such as hair spray and shampoo bottles.

Categorize Your Beauty Supplies

With use of storage and labeling, categorizing your belongings will help you manage your cosmetics accordingly. We’ve all accidentally ruined one thing or another by doing something like not completely closing the lid of our fingernail polish remover causing it to leak out into our eye makeup that happened to be in the same drawer. Well no more. It’s time to start categorizing your beauty care to keep these things from happening. Loose powders can easily cause a mess and when you’re trying to get organized a mess is the last thing that you want.

When storing your makeup, make an effort to put like products together. Not only does this keep the little accidents from happening but it also helps you keep track of what you have and know exactly where it goes.

Stash By Use

Most people have a favorite lipstick, eyeliner or even hair spray that they use practically every day and are their go to for any time of day. If this sounds like you then it makes little sense in rifling through all your things and creating a mess when you know exactly what you want.

Create a special container, preferably something that is easy to access and visible and put all your daily use things here such as straightening iron (my Babyliss Pro is always in need), blush and mascara. Every once in a while you might find yourself in a rush so, having a go-to stash would be beneficial because whenever push comes to shove you can always grab the entire display and jump in the car. All your essentials are with you and you didn’t have to rifle through drawers and cabinets to find that comb that works magic on your bed head.

Condense What You Have

Condensing your beauty and hair supplies may sound similar to the out with the old trick, but with condensing you take it a step further. Instead of throwing things away, you are simply swapping out larger sizes for small and turning the half empty glass into a fuller one. For example, if you have half a bottle of shampoo sitting around, transfer the contents into a smaller bottle. Same can be done with perfume, finger nail polish remover and even liquid foundation.

Though this works with a lot of items, you might find that you have some things that are just hard to minimize such as hair sprays, curling irons and hair dryers. Bigger may be better but try investing in travel sized bottles of hairspray, folding curling irons and small sized hair dryers. Turning your hair and beauty products into travel sized options is a great way to maximize your counter space and minimize your product size.

You don’t have to let a life of beauty run your life and overrun your bathroom counter. Simplifying your beauty and hair supplies can be a daunting task but it only takes five easy steps for you to get organized. Try them out and see the results, I’m sure you’ll be satisfied.

 What are your Beauty Supply organization secrets?