I organize my clothes closet by color. I keep off-season clothes in the guest bedroom. So why is my jewelry scattered all over the place and often sitting in a drawer in a tangled mess?
I came to the conclusion that I just didn’t organize my jewelry in a way that motivated me to keep it organized.
So, here is my 3 step solution for tackling my messy jewelry.
Time to untangle this mess!
1. Hunt & Gather
First, I took everything out of my jewelry armoire and spread it out on the floor of my bedroom.
I also hunted down all the pieces of jewelry I’ve left by accident. My coat pockets. My car, under the seat and in the console. The kitchen desk. The bottom of my purse. Every piece went onto the bedroom floor.
2. Sort & Bag
I wanted to organize my jewelry the same way I choose what jewelry to wear with my outfit. That way, there is hope I’ll keep it organized when I put it away.
So, I separated my jewelry by type (earrings, rings, bracelets, necklaces, and brooches). Then, for each type I separated the silver from the gold from the colorful jewelry. For the few jewelry pieces that are a gold and silver combo, I just made a quick decision on whether it is mostly gold or silver and put it on that pile. I didn’t overthink it.
Sorting necklaces – gold, silver, color.
Next, I thinned the herd by pulling out jewelry I don’t wear regularly. It was time to get tough.
- Some jewelry was broken. If valuable broken jewelry was fixable, it went into a plastic Ziploc bag marked “Fix.”
- Any other broken jewelry went into the “Trash” Ziploc.
- Jewelry I’ll never wear again went into the “Donate” Ziploc.
- Special event and holiday jewelry went into a drawer near the bottom of my armoire.
Keepsake jewelry (like Grandma’s Bulova wristwatch) went into a sweet keepsake box in the bottom of my armoire. (more on keepsake jewelry in a future post)
- Any jewelry left over went into the “Donate” Ziploc — I always thought I’d wear it “someday” but that day never seemed to come.
Now someone else can appreciate it!
3. Store Here or There
With the Ziploc bags of jewelry off to the side, I focused on the jewelry I do wear regularly and where to store it.
My jewelry armoire is fairly large, but it wouldn’t support storing jewelry based on the groupings I had just created. I wanted to keep my gold jewelry separate from the silver and color jewelry, and keep it stored by type (e.g. necklace, bracelets), too.
New, organized home for my silver jewelry.
Last summer, I purchased an 18” square wall-mount jewelry armoire from Amazon that I hung on the wall in my closet, just above my full-size floor-standing jewelry armoire.
I decided to store my silver jewelry in my new wall armoire since I seem to wear it more often. I arranged my gold jewelry in the top drawers of my full-size floor armoire. Then, I put my color jewelry in the drawers below the gold jewelry.
Lots of options in gold.
No more searching drawer after drawer, looking for those chunky gold earrings to wear with my deep purple cowl neck sweater! Now, when I get dressed, I can easily see all my gold (or silver or color) jewelry at a glance.
Ahhhhhhh. A place for everything, and everything in its place!
Thank you, as always, for listening to my stories.
Margaret 
