Nail Polish Storage + My Collection

Hey guys!

Today I have another informational post for you! :) I've put my nail care series on hold because I went through all the topics I could think of. Please, please let me know if you have any requests for nail care posts that I haven't done already because I ran out of ideas. :P Just let me know and I'll most likely be able to do the post you request!
I'll be sharing some nail polish storage ideas and show you how I store mine.

I'll mainly be sharing ideas for larger collections (100+ polishes).

The most popular nail polish storage for polish addicts and bloggers would be a Helmer, from IKEA. A Helmer is a 6 drawer unit on wheels (though you can choose to not attach the wheels when you assemble it). A Helmer measures 28x69cm and it comes in red or white. It also has a slot for a label on each drawer, and the drawers are the PERFECT height for nail polish! :) A Helmer holds around 500 polishes.

I got my first Helmer in January and I love it. It keeps my polish really organised (for the most part... you'll see soon lol) and it really does hold a lot of polish!

I believe that Helmers are sold in all IKEAs around the world. They're also pretty affordable in my opinion, here in SA they're $79 but some other states are $129. In the US I think they cost $39.

There's been some confusion lately surrounding Helmers.. Everybody thought they were being discontinued but it was apparently just some IKEAs that are discontinuing the Helmer (sadly SA is one of them :( ) and they're also bringing out a brighter white colour rather than the regular creamy white colour (annoying for people who already own a cream coloured one and want to get another because they won't match).
It's not super easy to see the colour of every polish that's in the drawers, but that doesn't really bother me.

I'll show you Helmer & collection now! (I'm also planning to film a video on this soon, I just need to get better organised first haha). Please excuse some of the drawers, they're a little messy. I actually took these photos close to a month ago so I've actually downsized my collection since then, and reorganized my drawers too.

On top of my Helmer I have my most used nail tools like my clean up brush, tweezers, cuticle nippers (only to clip hang nails!) etc, in this little measuring cup thing (lol - woops, I think I took this from the kitchen and forgot about it), my most used top coats and base coats, hand lotions and my nail polish remover. My desk where I do all my nail painting is directly to the right of my Helmer so I like to have all of this stuff easy to grab on the top of the Helmer. :) I have my lamp there too. I used to use this lamp to take my nail photos but I recently discovered that it's not bright enough for me so I use a different one now. I'll go over that in another post, though. :)

In the first drawer of my Helmer, I've got some other top and base coats/treatments, stamping polishes, buffers, files, brushes, stripers, and other nail art stuff. Oh and my OPI Man With The Golden Gun top coat. ;) Please excuse how messy this drawer is! I've cleaned it up since these photos were taken, though.

Now we have the second drawer, which is the first drawer of polish! In this drawer I only have OPI (including most of my OPI minis) and China Glaze. I have the most OPIs than any other brand in my collection, I think! I just adore the formula and their brushes. Also they do do some rather unique colours from time to time, in my opinion. China Glaze is another of my fave brands, I'd say I love the formula just as much as OPI and their colours are definitely unique too, more-so than OPI I'd say. A few months ago this drawer used to hold 5 other brands as well as OPI and China Glaze sooo I guess my collection has grown a lot from those 2 brands lately haha!

The third drawer is only 2 rows full full right now LOL! It holds Essie, Orly, Color Club, Butter London, Nails Inc, Models Own and Lime Crime. I have more from these brands, but they're in my untrieds haha!

Please excuse whatever that dusty stuff is on top of my Butter London bottles. o.O

And this drawer... is my indies! :D I've got Aussie indies and US indies mostly. Actually I think that's all. Haha. This drawer looks totally unorganised too... lol.

The next drawer is all Aussie brands (plus a couple other random 'drugstore' brands)! :D I swear this looked more organised in person... Haha it just looks messy in this photo. I have some Ulta3, Face of Australia, Cotton On, Chi Chi, BYS, Australis, Sportsgirl, Savvy etc.

This last drawer holds more 'international' and drugstore polishes. Essence, Revlon, Urban Outfitters, Covergirl, Sally Hansen, Sinful Colors etc. :)

And then there's my untried polishes... :/ Yeah I have a lot of untrieds. I have more since the time I took this photo too... :(

I have them in all random boxes and baskets because I didn't have one basket/box big enough for all of them LOL. I haven't counted them but I'm estimating that there's definitely over 100 there.

So I'm guessing I now have at least 500 polishes in my collection. I'm not really sure lol. I do purge them pretty often though and pass them on to other people if I don't like a certain polish. I won't keep anything just for the sake of it. Even HTFs. Haha.

So, for me a Helmer is great but maybe it wouldn't be a great option for some people. So here are some other storage ideas. I won't show photos of all of them or this would be an enormous post.

Nail Polish Racks

Nail polish racks are great for someone who wants to be able to see every polish and colour they own, right there in front of them on the wall. I did want a nail polish rack for a while but in my opinion it would be too expensive and I don't really have any wall space for even one rack, and I'd probably need at least 3 or 4 racks!
So nail polish racks are definitely best for someone with a smaller collection. By smaller I mean maybe 200 polishes max. The polish racks I've seen typically hold around 90 polishes per rack.
I've seen them sold on eBay and Amazon, and head2toebeauty and Transdesign (not sure where they ship them to though..) I believe also sells them. I think they typically cost around $50 per rack.
You can also opt to build your own rack. I have seen tutorials on YouTube on how to build a polish rack out of foam board which is a very cheap option (though I'd be a bit worried about how sturdy it would be... lol). So you can just search 'DIY polish rack foam board' or something to find that if you're interested. You can also build them out of wood, and DulceCandy87 has a great tutorial on this. So if you were to make your own rack, you could really make it as big or small as you'd like.

IKEA 'Alex'
For an even larger collection, the IKEA Alex might be a better fit! An Alex is also a drawer system from IKEA, and in my opinion it's a lot nicer looking and matches with a lot of other IKEA furniture. An Alex is available in a few different sizes but the regular 'Alex' has 9 drawers. I'm not sure how many polishes they own but obviously more than a Helmer.
Some polish bottles are too high for these drawers, however which is a downside.
There are two other types of Alexs from IKEA. There's a 5 drawer version which I don't think would be that great for polish, it only has two of the more narrow drawers, and a wider 6 drawer version.

Cake Stand
I saw this on Pinterest first but here's a post about it from PinkSweetSz! And Zoya Nail Polish posted a photo of a cake stand full of Zoyas on their Facebook page too! Great for smaller collections, it looks adorable! It may not be the easiest way to see all of your polishes but if that doesn't concern you this would be a really cute option.

DIY Nail Polish Box
A cheap and super easy idea that I saw on the Beauty Department a while back. It would definitely not be ideal for a collection of my size but for someone just starting out or with a small collection it's definitely a fun and cute idea.

Portable Collection
I also saw something cute on Nails By Kayla Shevonne a few weeks ago for someone who maybe has a very small polish collection, or maybe does nails for other people and needs to carry nail polish around with them!

It's called a Caboodles Gilded Pleasure Nail Valet and it can carry all your nail tools and polishes that you need to. Check out Kayla Shevonne's review here.

So I hope this post helps you if you're looking for a new way to store your nail polishes. :)
Please please let me know if you have any requests for more informational posts like this! I have a lot of fun putting these sorts of posts together. :)

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