Jewelry display and organization

So, you have a lot of jewelry that you
a) don’t wear all of and maybe even forgot you had some pieces?
b) have stored away in a place where it gets tangled?
c) want to show off on your body and in your home?

I fit all of the above.

I had multiple jewelry boxes and storage centers for various items. A small tin full of bracelets and a pretty box full of tangled necklaces were on display. I also stored a few jewelry boxes full of sentimental or jewelry from my adolescence when everyone gave me necklaces. (I’m the only niece/only granddaughter on my mom’s side.) A lot of these were sold on consignment, due to no longer fitting my neck or just the fact that I just didn’t love them anymore. A few were real gold or silver and I sold those at a jewelry store. I had a TON tested – it was pretty embarrassing, I had a lot of other metals that the jewelry lady didn’t care about; but she handled it very nicely.

My earring collection was ridiculous. I have 5 piercings in my ears and I love to accessorize with earrings – however, my ears are extremely sensitive. I had a few earring trees over the years, but they weren’t great at holding stud earrings.

I saw a lot of ideas for jewelry organization on Pinterest. But I don’t own an old rake an couldn’t really install a towel rod to hang necklaces. (I wish I had links.) I do not, and did not want, enough jewelry for a GIANT jewelry box, as pretty as those are. (Some good DIY ideas: HERE )

What I did have, and had forgotten about: a GIANT cork bulletin board. It used to hold photos, notes, and postcards which had been attached with tape, so it was a mess!

I thought about paper, but I thought it would be too tacky-looking to have bright pink computer paper stapled onto my jewelry board. So I found some wrapping paper in our wrapping paper bin: shiny gold with stars. Why not? Stapled it on and began hanging necklaces and bracelets. VOILA:

It hangs on the bedroom wall above my dresser. Perfect! Now I never have an excuse to forget to wear that gorgeous necklace that matches my outfit perfectly. Or, you know, whatever. AND I can display my work of art to anyone who comes in our bedroom. (Okay, that’s not many people.)

AS FOR EARRINGS – I did a major overhaul of these, too. I justified keeping many, many pairs for a very long time because “If I just wear them for a few hours, my ears only itch a little.” Not anymore!

Rather than selling these on consignment, I threw them away. Most were small studs. Also, a lot of the metal was peeling off

I still have some that I can wear for a day or a night out and then remove them – if it ever gets to be a shorter amount of time or I don’t love them anymore, they’ll go.

For this I created an earring book. I bought way too much pink felt, cut it into squares, and stitched the “pages” together like a book! The earrings go right through, and are organized in such a way that it’s easy for me to find what I need.

Note the large amount of holiday earrings – a gift one year, and I’ve kept most as I work in an elementary school!

As you can see, the stitching is far from perfect. As you cannot see, the pages aren’t perfectly aligned or even exactly the same size. But it certainly does the job. I keep spare single earrings on the cover because I do have that one hole in my cartilage (a helix piercing.)

This was so helpful that I’ve bought more jewelry items since making this – and wear them – OR I pass up buying jewelry that I don’t think I’ll REALLY wear. 

Cork boards can be pretty inexpensive and easy to hang. Felt was easy to find and buy (pretty sure I found that felt at Walmart) and I hand-stitched the edge.

How do you organize your jewelry?

Gift closet organization

It started when I was going through some old stuff I accidentally found. I found some treasures – pom poms, customize-able bracelets, etc. I was going to stuff it all into our Gift Closet but when I opened the door, it was a mess!

The Gift Closet is actually the closet in J’s mancave. It contains some of his stuff, but a lot of holiday items too: our small (but only) Christmas tree, ornaments for when we get a bigger tree, wrapping paper and gift bags, and any gifts I’m waiting for a birthday or holiday to distribute. I used to keep all gifts in a big gift bag …but then I used the gift bag for, well, giving a gift. And there are too many now.

I have 9 nieces and nephews, and 2 other kids that will be in my family “officially” when my BIL and his fiance get married. I already consider them family. That’s a lot of birthdays. 

Right now, there are 5 kids age 6+. I collect gifts for 3 of those kids all the time, because they are easy to shop for. As others’ birthdays approach, I get gifts for those kids too. I don’t have a bag for everyone because the little ones are easier to find things for, and harder to collect unique items for.

SO. I began with this:

This is what was in the closet already. I had more (like the pom poms) that had just been found which are not picured.

It would be nice, I thought, to have a bag for each kid, or even for each family. One per family would have been ideal, but there are 7 kids in one family unit alone, so that couldn’t have worked. Also, I’m down to only 3 big paper sacks and only a few medium-sized gift bags. (Lots of small gift bags, how un-useful.)

So I whipped out the big zipper-seal bags, and organized.

On the zipper-seal bags I wrote the child’s name and birthday. I plan on reusing these bags, and making more for the rest of the kids as the time comes.

 

There were 2 kids whose gifts would not fit into even my biggest ziplock bags, due to size or quantity of gifts. For these I attached sticky notes to label the child/birthday, but the sticky notes are easily removable.

 

I also have a few gifts that I might give someone at some point, like a handmade journal, fairy wands, and a beautiful little green bag which I could put other gifts in. These went in the MISC zipper bag.

Also, presents for all the kids will go in here – like that bag of Valentine-y heart erasers that I plan on handing out once there are no babies in at least one home.

These are the bags I’ve collected so far. They will increase as more birthdays come up (a few have just passed, for example.)

The santa bag on the right side of this picture is for miscellaneous Christmas presents for adults. Right now there’s only one item in the bag, but as we tend to do secret santa and white elephant, we’ll see what gets added!

The brown bag in the back is holiday-related but not gifts.

This is the shelf of the closet now. I moved the sticky note labels to the sides of the bags so I could easily view them.

Not so bad! It’s certainly better than it was – I had an almost-avalanche trying to get to the presents, and they were not sorted by child at all.

I’ll end this post with the customize-able bracelets I made for a niece’s birthday in September:

She’s getting the rest of the kit too so she can change out the letters as she pleases

 

Do any of you have a closet or another area set aside for gifts/holiday items? In my big family, it’s a plus to think ahead.