craftgrrl | Sep. 19th, 2011

How do you organize your jewelry?

I own a LOT of pieces and I've tried a LOT of ways to organize it...

I've used huge bulletin boards with hooks screwed in - was great to display but wasn't very efficient and I quickly ran out of room even with the largest board I could find.

I've tried fabric covered styrofoam and just sticking earrings directly in to it and hooks for necklaces. Didn't work that great and quickly had too many holes to keep sticking things in.

I've tried commercial jewelry organizers but I find they're either woefully inadequate in the amount of storage they provide, or don't actually organize anything very well.

Currently I have matching pieces in small ziploc bags (the kind you'd store beads in) and then everything is sorta dumped in to a basket.

This works well for keeping pieces untangled, transporting stuff and keeping matching pieces together, but not so great for actually organizing it and displaying it. I forget about stuff that I have, or have to go digging through a million little bags to find the piece I want. It's driving me insane!!

Obviously I need to make something that will organize and display a large number of pieces (I'd say that I currently have about 60 necklaces, 70 pairs of earrings, 4 - 5 bracelets and a couple of rings).

Any thoughts on what to make? How would you handle this?