Makeup Organization: Hygiene Station and Makeup Brushes

Despite appearances to the contrary, I'm actually not a naturally neat person. It's a running joke both at work and at home that I leave a trail of chaos behind me, and I can be found by following the detritus of a dozen or so half-finished projects (and ice cream bowls) scattered about. One of my dogs has wolfed down more than one errant sock I've forgotten to put away (even though somehow its mate managed to find its way to the hamper).

My brain is Pisces-typical: non-linear, unmoored and tangential.

And yet, somehow, I'm also an organization freak. I get a dopamine rush from the sorting process. I get excited about storage boxes the way some people get excited about Disneyland. I'm always looking for a better way to store and display the things I love.

And then that just goes up to eleven when the Spring Cleaning bug hits. Last week that meant tweaking part of my vanity, specifically my hygiene and brush organization and storage.

With the way I've set up my Alex units to form my vanity, I ended up with a blank wall to one side. It looked a little bit awkward, and struck me as a waste of space, but I couldn't figure out what to put there considering the space restraints created by the dimensions of the units and the space taken up by open drawers. I then came across some storage boxes (see?) and a cute little metal rack at Homesense, and inspiration struck. Up until now I had my extra makeup brushes and hygiene supplies in a cabinet on the other side of the room, and I figured having everything set up closer to the actual vanity would be more practical. And now I finally had a way of making that set up aesthetically pleasing as well.

I asked Androo to shimmy the vanity over to the right by a couple of inches to create enough clearance for the drawers, and then he kindly put the rack up for me (god, I love that man). I then stacked the two storage boxes below (again, with enough clearance for the drawers of the Alex unit to open), and also added old tea set and perfume set boxes for extra storage.

(The big glass mason jars on the Alex unit to the left are where I keep q-tips and cotton pads.)

The top shelf of the rack is where I now keep my "cleaning" supplies: alcohol in a glass spray bottle, various makeup removers, spot brush cleaner, makeup wipes, hand cream (because alcohol is drying).

The bottom shelf contains little bins for makeup brushes and sponges that need to be washed. Instead of putting dirty brushes back into the jars on my vanity (to take up space and fester their bacteria on the clean brushes), they get popped in these bins, and then I can just grab one and go to the sink with it. This way I also don't get overwhelmed with the amount of brushes that need washing, as I can do a bin at a time and rotate them back in.

(The little gold pouch contains my travel set of Shu brushes, simply because it wedges neatly in that little space behind the bin.)

In one of the new storage boxes I have backups of wipes, sponges, cotton pads, paper towel and makeup remover. (The other box on the bottom contains PR info sheets and such, since it's something I like to keep for archival/reference purposes but don't need constant access to.)

And then it was on to the brushes. As I was pulling them out of the cabinet, I realized that I really needed to do a sort and purge before organizing them, otherwise I would be doing unnecessary work. (I debated filming a video, but it was honestly too boring and fast of a process to merit it.)

These are the ones I decided to keep, grouped together roughly by function. These passed the test because they are backups of brushes I rotate regularly (eyeliner brushes, powder brushes), or brushes I use less frequently but still like to have on hand (the Smashbox bronzer brush - that red lacquer handle is everything - the Glamcor finish brush). 

Before putting each brush back into my collection, I asked myself whether 1) it was good quality and 2) a truly useful brush and 3) a brush that would rotate to my vanity regularly.

These are the brushes I parted with. Some where just cracked and otherwise broken (on the floor on the left) and went into the trash. The rest were brushes that didn't pass the criteria. This was especially the case for brushes where I had better quality options.

I found that I almost all of my Sigma brushes failed by that measure. Aside from the paint peeling from some of them, the bristles felt a lot rougher than I remembered, particularly in contrast to the brushes I'd recently invested in. I don't think they're good quality brushes, honestly, and they don't hold up well over the years. Thanks, youtube, for suckering me. *fistshake*

I also passed on the majority of my Coastal Scents and Crown brushes, and some Sonia Kashuk ones from a set that didn't pass muster or where just not ones I see myself using.

All of these have been cleaned and re-homed with the the daughter of a friend.

I didn't do any major re-organizing of my vanity, but I figured an overview of how I have it set up might be nice?

This is where I keep my skin prep. The cake stand (from Chapters) has some of the moisturizers and toners I currently use (minus the Embryolisse, which I had just used). The little teal bowl (from Anthropologie) has some samples I'm trying out. The two white bird bowls (also Chapters) have my clean beautyblenders and assorted bits.

These are the same jars I've had for a while, which are technically coffee mugs and flower pots, again from Chapters. I swapped out the dry rice for polyfill from Michael's, because I got paranoid about bugs. :P

I have them sorted by function, best as possible:

Concealer and lip brushes, eyeliner and detail brushes, laydown and buffing brushes, cheek and blending brushes...

Natural hair powder brushes, synthetic powder brushes, foundation brushes, highlighter/contour and precision powder brushes. And then all the Real Techniques in a mug without polypill, because their chubbier bases kept scattering all the beads when I pulled them out, which was making me INSANE.

I would say the majority of my brushes in rotation right now are MAC, Zoeva, Glamcor, and Real Techniques, with some scattered in from Sonia Kashuk, Senna, Hakuhodo, Marc Jacobs, Chikuhodo, London Brush Company, Inglot, Wayne Goss and Cover FX.

I did just purchase a few from the Walmart brand synthetic line to try out, but since incorporating a few really high quality brushes recently, I think my future purchases are going to be investments. I hate being a douche-y snob, but there really is no comparison between a higher-end Japanese-made brush and the mid or lower end equivalent in terms of application and the feeling on the skin. Especially with natural hair brushes.

So that's it for now! Let me know if you want me to continue with these kind of posts. :)