Cosmopolitan Closets
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    Editing an Expansive Set of Essie

    Hi!  This is a super quick post and an easy thing to do!  If you have been following me for awhile, then you know that I have blogged about how to store my expansive collection of essie polishes. 

    Recently, I was looking for a particular color and had to dump them out in order to locate the desired polish.  That’s when it dawned on me, my storage solution just wasn’t working anymore.  Not to mention, there was a set of polish stored in a decorative trunk as well.  I knew I needed to edit the polishes I had (especially the old and dried out ones) and find a better way to store them.  Check out my before and afters below and as always, feel free to comment and share.  Thanks for reading!
    in my clear cube, to wanting to hang them on a nail polish rack on the wall, to storing them in large glass vases.  About 2 years ago, I put them in a dollar store container and didn’t look back. 

    Original storage – my essie polish collection lived in my clear cube forever!  Unfortunately, they were too tall and didn’t allow for the lid to close.  This was circa 2012.


    Next, I found this acrylic polish rack on Amazon sometime in 2013.  I think it was $5.  All my polish fit, but I was unable to hang it on the wall because the apartment that I lived in at the time had cement walls and made hanging everything a headache.


    Next, I found cute and inexpensive glass jars to store some of my polishes.  I liked how they looked, but I had way too many to use the small jars.


    Next, I found a huge glass canister to store the majority of the polishes.  While it looked beautiful, it was a pain getting the colors out.


    I came across these plastic containers in Dollar Tree and grabbed two of them to store the polishes.  They fit perfectly inside my cube storage unit and made assessing the polishes easy.  The problem was I really could not see what color the polish was because the containers are blue.

    I also had a ton of  polish and nail care essentials in this decorative chest.  While I love these decorative boxes, I have simply outgrown the style.  Plus, the chest is kind of large.  This is when I decided I needed to edit the polishes I have and look for an alternative storage option.

    I decided I wanted to use some sort of acrylic storage, but not an organizer that put the polishes on display.  I spent a bit of time going through Amazon and The Container Store websites and still didn’t find the perfect box.  During a weekend stroll through TJMaxx, I came across this little acrylic box for $3.99.  I knew what size box I needed because I measured the polish bottles, as well as the cube storage unit where it would be kept.  I found 5 of the same box and dashed to the register!

    DONE!  I painstakingly went through every bottle of polish and ended up throwing away 23 bottles.  Next, I sorted by color and divided the remaining bottles amongst the 5 boxes.  Then I stored them in the cube, they fit perfectly!  If you can’t find a set of matching boxes, check out this Ikea set of 5 here.

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