Bangles, Baubles, & Bijou

As most of you know, I recently moved across the country and my new abode (which I'll be sharing in a post soon) has considerably less space than my old apartment. Although I've been able to figure out storage solutions for most things, my jewelry presented the biggest problem.

In my old apartment, a previous tenant had installed a towel bar on the inside of my closet door, which I used to hang my necklaces.

You can kind of see it in the background of this terrible and blurry iPhone photo.

My bracelets, rings, and earrings were kept in a variety of dishes on top of my bedside table and on a dresser in my living room closet. (Ohhh, how I miss having multiple closets). Although the necklace bar was pretty functional, storing the rest of my jewelry all over the apartment meant that I often forgot about things and consequently, didn't wear a lot of what I owned. Another problem was that I had a lot of junk jewelry taking up space - some that had seen better days and some that I just didn't like anymore.

My first step was to purge all of the non-sentimental stuff that I never wear. I also got rid of all of the cheap jewelry that was past its prime. I did most of this before I moved. Then, in my packing related haze, I brilliantly threw all of my jewelry into a box so that when it arrived, it looked like this:

Smart, right? Don't worry, these are hardly precious jewels. Pretty much everything I own is inexpensive, considering my knack for losing jewelry. But that's no excuse for the above. Once I managed to untangle all of that, I was determined to find a better storage solution here. Unfortunately, there were a few obstacles I needed to overcome. First, my closet here is super small and has a bifold-like door on which nothing can hang - so no bauble bar this go-round. Second, I have very little surface space available to put a bunch of pretty jewelry dishes. So, as with many of life's problems, I took to Pinterest to find a solution ;)

Here are some of the options I found:

Burlap wrapped around a corkboard with handles, knobs, & cups. Originally from Better Homes & Gardens.

Very cool contraption for which I couldn't find the original source, found via Pinterest.

Vintage teacups & saucers in a drawer, via Martha Stewart.

Driftwood and pretty knobs, via Visibly Moved.

Antlers with gold tips, via Miss Renaissance.

Picture frame & wire, via Real Simple.

After perusing the possibilities, I culled together a few different ideas, inspired a little from Pinterest and a lot from the awesome bulldog hooks I found when shopping with a friend a couple of weeks ago. Unfortunately, HomeSense only had two of them. In order to make sure that my necklaces didn't get all tangled up again AND that I could see enough of them to remember to wear them - I figured I should have at least 5 hooks. So, I picked up 3 additional inexpensive hooks and interspersed them with my bulldog hooks. Although, in the spirit of honesty, I will admit that I had to call in reinforcements to actually hang the hooks because I am TERRIBLE at hanging things on walls.

Dad to the rescue! (My camera battery was dead at this point - so iPhone had to step in)

Here is the final result of my necklace wrangling:

But that still left the problem of no surface space to store my bracelets/rings/earrings. I'm a very visual person - if I can't easily see something (i.e., jewelry, clothes), I don't wear it. I'm not someone who remembers she owns something and rifles through her drawers until she finds it. Out of sight, out of mind. So after considerable deliberation, I decided to streamline the contents of my desk and empty this shallow top drawer so that I can use it for jewelry.

This desk was a Habitat Restore find and is in for a makeover in the next few months.

I rustled up a few pretty dishes and laid out the rest of my jewelry the best I could. This way, it's spread out enough for me to see it all but not creating visual clutter when the drawer is closed. I used dishes from Anthropologie, HomeSense, and an antique store, as well as a pretty gold-rimmed Fire-King dish of my mom's and a vintage teacup & saucer that belonged to my grandmother.

Ikat bowl from Anthro, bangle dish from HomeSense, black saucer was my grandmother's.

Vintage teacup & saucer belonged to my grandmother.

Fire King dish is my mom's, small bird dish is from Anthro

This may not be a permanent solution for my bracelets. I have a DIY idea for bracelet storage but considering my luck with DIY, I want to try it out before I share it here. So for now, my bracelets will stay in this drawer.

Finally, I put this little homemade dish next to my bed to stash my everyday jewelry (and the stuff I forget to take off until I'm already in bed).

I've only been using this system for a couple of days but I'm already wearing more of my jewelry than I usually do, so hopefully it continues to work well. Let me know what you think! Have you devised any creative solutions for small-space jewelry storage?