Jewelry Dish*

I have long been troubled with the state of my dresser.

As space in our apartment has always been limited, I’ve always had to get creative with the little bits I did have. When we moved here, I downsized from a huge 10 drawer dresser to a much, much smaller one with only four drawers. While I was able to rearrange my clothes to make it work, the dresser top was an entirely different story.

Both of the bathrooms we’ve had have been teeny tiny, so in order to conserve space I’ve kept all my hair products, jewelry and other miscellaneous items in our bedroom on the top of my dresser. It was much easier when I had the top of the huge mother dresser in Senior’s City, but this little wee one has always posed a bit of a problem.

My hair products all went into a bin, but I was at a loss for a solution for my big necklaces and earrings. They’ve been sitting in a basket, and every time I went to pull one out it was a a constant battle to untangle and search for matching earrings.

Last summer I had had enough and I went to the dollar store to try and find a quick solution. I went through every aisle and finally found a tray that could help me organize my earrings. So, for the last several months my dresser has looked like this:

It’s a tray intended for papers or letters, but as it’s mesh I can hook all my earrings through and get them out of the big overflowing brown basket you see beneath it. Here’s a closer look:

The basket is absolutely overflowing with bracelets, necklaces, hair bands, etc. It’s gross. And here’s a close up of the actual tray (aka: solution #1):

It works, but it’s just not terribly pretty. I’ve never been completely happy with it, though I was thrilled to get them out of the basket. I thought that this was the best I was going to do when it came to jewelry organization.

Then Jae posted a link to a blog that I am seriously loving right now. And on this blog was an absolutely brilliant idea: A Jewelry Tray.

Charity, voice behind All Things Beautiful, was also looking for a solution for her jewelry, and she transformed a thrifted two-tier tray into an amazing jewelry dish that is just… perfect. I fell in love with the idea the moment I saw it. So, for the last few weeks I’ve been searching high and low for a similar tray without success.

I was getting a bit discouraged, then on the magical night that we found our dream furniture set I saw something that caught my eye: a beautiful glass dish with a cool beaded detail around the rim. I assumed that it would be more than I wanted to pay, but I decided to take a look anyway.

My jaw nearly dropped when I saw that it was on clearance for 75% off the sale price. It was a little different from the idea Charity used, but I thought that I could make it work, so I decided to get it.

It ended up costing me $5. (*swoon*)

I took it home and put some of my necklaces in it to see how it looked and was very happy with the result! I give you my new jewelry dish!

I LOVE it.

The next step was adding my earrings around the edges:

Ignore the gross state of my dresser–it’s going to be painted and given some love when we move! But in the mean time, at least my jewelry is organized!

I’m still on the hunt for a tray like Charity’s, but I’m quite happy with this in the meantime!

How do you keep your jewelry organized?