Organization circa Summer 2012, aka STASH PORN

Moving has always been a traumatic experience for me, largely on account of my slightly ridiculous emotional attachments to VBT (Very Breakable Things). This includes--but is not limited to--knick-knacks, picture frames, fancy cups, and makeup. Oh-ho, yes indeed, my friends, make-up is EXTREMELY breakable. Just 3 months ago, I found myself weeping over one of my magnetic palettes filled with Pumpkin & Poppy products, including the unique Gold Dust highlighter and my beloved (and very limited edition) Cobblepot eyeshadow. One of the products had shattered and coated the entire palette in red dust, ruining every other product in the palette, plus the palette itself. A little over 3 years before that, my dear uncle was greatly regretting his offer to help me move to my first apartment when I spent half of the day fussing over my makeup collection, taping it down and anchoring it to his truck until it was the beauty equivalent of Fort Knox.

In other words, I don't like moving, and a lot of that has to do with how much I love my makeup.

That being said, there's something very refreshing about unpacking all of your boxes and reorganizing. I downright enjoy arranging my stuff, and in fact, the pictures you see represent my third re-arrangment in less than 2 days. (So I like making stuff look pretty. Sue me.)

But enough of me blathering. Let's get on to the PORN.

The Dresser

For the past decade or so, my dresser has been what some might call a "little kid dresser." I prefer to call it "an anal-retentive hoarder's paradise." Until this morning, the top of my dresser was home to half a dozen stuffed animals, assorted knick-knacks, a small pile of scarves and t-shirts that needed sorted, and a labeling system I put in to place to keep my well-meaning family from stuffing my clothes in to the wrong drawers. (NOTE: Said system was ultimately ineffective--I'm still finding socks in my jeans drawer.)

I decided that hey, I'm 24 years old and living here for the forseeable future. Why not cover my dresser in classier piles of shit and call it a day? So I packed down my cat statuettes and 1970s Woodstock plushie, kept just a few of my knick-knacks out, and raided my mother's cupboards for exceptionally functional glasswear. I now have about 1/3 of my collection lookin' pretty on my dresser.

Eyes, Cheeks, Brushes, Pencils, and Lip Care

(aka, Abusing Antiques and Stuffing Shit in to Cups)

If you've followed me on YouTube, this stuff probably looks pretty familiar...and pretty fuzzy. Sorry, my cat decided it would be awesome to nuzzle my brushes RIGHT before I put them on to the dresser. Sigh. Anyway, the Pilsner glass doesn't fit in with the rest of the decor, but it does fit my most-used brushes and I got it on an outing with my father, so it's kind of a necessity. To the left of that, you'll see my mascaras, my lash primer, my lash curler, and the liners/pencils I use very regularly. Off to the right is a small cup of cream and liquid cheek products, some of which I use constantly (Benefit High Beam, Kevyn Aucoin Creamy Moist Glow in Tansoleil, and MAC Cream Color Base in Pearl), some of which I'm trying to use more (Becca Beach Tint in Watermelon, NARS Illuminator in
Orgasm, and NYX Stick Blush in Pink Lotus). I have a major lady boner for creams, by the way, so be prepared for lots of those.

The round containers off to the left are actually from Japan, as are half of my antiques. I had a great uncle who was stationed in East Asia shortly after WWII, so he sent tons of stuff home to my great aunt, much of which went to me after she passed away. I didn't want to take them off of the dresser because I love them so much, but I think half of their beauty is their neat lids, so I just tilt those off to the side. The black one in the back contains lip care products I'm really loving right now, including Elizabeth Arden Lip Fix Cream and 2 of the brighter Revlon Lip Butters (Sweet Tart and Candy Apple). The red one in front currently holds eyeshadows I use like it's going out of style (Lancome Pink Zinc, Chanel Epatant, Benefit RSVP, and Wet n' Wild Brulee), and will eventually hold a few more shadows, but for now I'm trying to use my old school Urban Decay Liquid Liners before they dry up. You can also see the eyeshadow palettes I'm keeping out--I use an old card holder from Hallmark to hold them.

Base Makeup and Lip Products

(aka, Proof That I'm a Lipstick Junkie)

 Look! You can see my camera! Hi, everybody! :D

Anyway: I used this old Smashbox container to hold the base products I use pretty much every day. Again, this is not a surprise to those who watch me on YouTube: a dollop of Kevyn Aucoin Sensual Skin Enhancer that I slapped in to a container, a small container of Too Faced Shadow Insurance, generic face sunblock, Skindinavia Setting Spray, MAC Face & Body foundation, MAC Mineralized Skin Finish Natural, and theBalm Mary Lou-Manizer. Mary Lou is technically a highlighter, and I don't use it EVERY day, but I use it tons and the compact is effin' cute, so there you have it.

The stuff on the right side of the dresser gets kinda hodge-podge, but hey, that's the kind of gal I am. I have a few instant photos I took with a Fuji Instanx Mini stuck in a cat-shaped photo holder my mom bought me, an assortment of "taller" lipglosses and stains in a shoe cup my friend Jessica got for my birthday, and a lipstick container holding my "shorter" lipsticks, glosses, and stains. Does it match the rest of the stuff on my dresser? No. Do I love it anyway? You bet your sweet gherkins, I do. There's another antique Japanese box in the back, which holds some small trinkets of mine, plus a bottle of brush cleaner, a hand towel, and some brushes that need cleaned. It may not look pretty, but I am admittedly a function-over-form kind of person, plus a bit fussy about makeup cleanliness, so the towel stays there.

Skin and Hair Care, Perfumes, Polishes, and the Rest of My Stash

(aka, The Tower of Makeup Mount Doom)

I love my big sister, but DAMN, can she sprawl! We have the largest bedroom in the house, but 2/3 of it is consumed by her shoe rack, her computer desk, and her double bed. (I still sleep in a twin--it's a long story.) Hence, my space in the room amounts to: 1) my dresser, 2) the cavernous wasteland under my bed, and 3) what you see here. Lucky for me, the stuff that I collect--makeup, scarves, coins, and shoes--is mostly-easy to squish in to a small space.

Polishes

I've been going through my collection and purging stuff for a blog sale (to be posted here ASAP, I promise), and I decided that every polish I own--besides my Glee minis--must fit in this fold-out box. Considering there is room for all of 1 polish in this box as it stands now, that means I'm essentially on a nail polish no-buy for the time being. I got really lazy about painting my nails this past semester, as I was completely zombified by endless portfolio rewriters, but now that I've got plenty of free time and my complete collection of colors back, I think not buying nail polish is gonna be a biiiiiit harder than it was before. Just a bit. A tiny amount. A smidge. I hope. I haven't been able to use some of these for months, though, because they were back here in PA, so maybe that will occupy the Evil Money-Eating Lemmings in my head for a while.

The Top of the Tower

(aka, Downsizing a Perfume Collection is Like Tearing Out Your Fingernails: Painful and Smelly)

Thanks to the fact that I am stupidly picky about what I put on my face and hair, and thanks to how astronomically difficult it is to ship a metric ton of perfume bottles, this is a relatively small and "elite" assortment. You'll see all of two things back in the hair care section: the DryFast glaze that magically morphed my frizzy hair in to a manageable mass (alliteration, ho hum!) and a smelly but kinda cool texturizing spray. Seriously. That's it. That's all I put in my hair. I mean, sometimes I might do a small amount of hairspray or a spritz of Static Guard, but that's pretty rare, and I'm a terrible person who just steals her mom's hairspray.

On the right, I keep my not-used-every-day or for-bathtime-not-face-painting-time skincare. I have an Elizabeth Arden hydrating mask and the infamous 8 Hour Cream, plus some body sunblock and my Eucerin Q-10 moisturizer for sensitive skin. Baby oil is my makeup remover of choice. Two of my most trusted products--C.O.Bigelow Rosebud Salve and Avon Nurtura night cream--round out this chunk o' stuff.

On the left...well, that's a painful sight. You see, I used to own triple that amount of perfume, but shipping it would be extremely difficult, so I had to downsize. I have four "mini" perfumes: Haus of Gloi Moon Dog and Peach Mama (not pictured), Gucci Guilty Intense, and DKNY Be Delicious. The two full-sized perfumes I kept were Neroli Jasmine and, of course, my beloved Ghost Deep Night EDT. The two cordial dishes (God, my mom is gonna be pissed the next time she has a dinner party and can't find her nice flatware) hold my One Hand Washes the Other solid scents in one, my sample vials and decants in the other.

Inside the Drawers

The top drawer is primarily for blush palettes and palettes I don't use all that often, namely my Mehron aquacolors and the Prescriptives lip pallete my mother gave me, which I may very well take to the grave with me. It also contains the "huh?" stuff, things that are kind of hard to place: false lashes, pencil sharpeners, extra compacts, a MAC Hey Sailor box, and so forth. I have a few of my most-used hair things in the bottom right corner as well, because my cat is notorious for stealing my hair ties.

 The second drawer holds a lot of stuff, but in my head, putting it together makes sense. It's primarily a drawer for back-ups or "not-right-nows": foundations that don't match me at the moment, my back-up tube of TFSI and extra Milani Luminous blush, the original containers for Kevyn Aucoin Sensual Skin Enhancer and Bobbi Brown Corrector (which I will probably have until I kick the bucket, no lies), and my empty MAC lipstick tubes for Back2MAC. I also have a small cubby for brow covering products and my lip and eye pencils. To the right, you'll see all of the brushes I still use, but not as much as the ones on my dresser.

The third drawer is actually empty, because hey, why not? The fourth drawer contains what's left of my pigment and loose shadow collection...again, because shipping it all home proved way too difficult. The jars that take up most of the drawer are PearlEx pigments; they're technically craft pigments, but they're made from mica and I use them like eyeshadow and I haven't died yet, so yeah, go me being a role model for product safety. The tiny tupperware container (and yeah, I also raided my mom's tupperware) contains glitter glues and pigment adhesives. The small basket holds glitters, Fyrinnae eyeshadows, and a few MAC pigments.

Skipping down to two big drawers at the bottom reveals my true addictions: lip and cheek products. Well...there's also a small basket of eye stuff off to the right, which goes to show you how much I care about powder eyeshadow singles (hint: not that much). The basket in the very front is lipsticks. The tupperware container to the left is primarily glosses and tinted balms, but I also squished in a few stains and lipsticks that didn't fit in to my other holders. In the back, you have the majority of my cream and liquid cheek products.

The cheek products continue on to the second big drawer, which I would roll around like a happy, blush-obsessed kitten if I could. It's mostly powders, but there are some creams and liquids in the messy tupperware container on the right side. It's probably a bad sign that I purged my stash, then looked at this drawer and went, "Oh, look, a little room for my stuff!" Nah? Nah!