How beauty pros corral all those products Elizabeth Mayhew Special to The Washington Post
YouTube beauty star Safiya Nygaard has more than 8.5 million subscribers, and judging from the video images of her workspace, her eye shadows, lipsticks, bronzing powders and mascaras nearly match that number. She realized she had amassed drawers, shelves and bins full of products - much of which she was not using - and decided she needed to get her beauty kit under control. But a great makeup guru does not necessarily a great organizer make, so Nygaard called in professionals. Enter Los Angeles organizers Joni Weiss and Kitt Fife of Practically Perfect who, along with their team, helped Nygaard sort and store her products so they would be accessible, visible, attractively contained and easy to maintain. The video of Nygaard’s makeup room transformation has been viewed more than 16 million times, making it one of her most popular features and attesting to the fact that we just can’t get enough of seeing people sort, purge and put away their stuff. Although Weiss and Fife admit that organizing for a beauty influencer presents specific challenges (all those products!), they say there are many lessons that we all can learn and apply to our own makeup drawers and cabinets. Here is some of their advice, plus tips from some wellorganized beauty pros, to help you get your own bathroom in order. • Be smart about what you keep in your space Weiss and Fife say the biggest hurdle for all of us - beauty pros included - is typically space; most of us just don’t have enough of it, particularly in our bathrooms. Furthermore, the duo says that people don’t usually prioritize their storage space by keeping the right products in key spaces. 12
“We always encourage people to keep their everyday essentials readily accessible and available. Those essentials vastly vary from person to person, but we believe that everyone should make sure that the items they use all of the time are given prime real estate,” Weiss says. It’s also important to maximize vertical space. For Nygaard, Weiss and Fife used several tall Alex drawer towers from Ikea to house her vast makeup collection. Other vertical spaces they say to consider: walls (install shelving), doors (hang shoe bags or over-the-door racks) and the shower (buy a hanging organizer that attaches to your shower head or install a tension pole shelving unit for inside your shower). • Decide if you are all in, all out or somewhere in between Whether you keep your products and tools out on top of your vanity or store them away is a matter of preference and is partially determined by your space. Weiss is an outof-sight person, whereas Fife prefers to neatly organize items on her vanity so she can see what she has. “There is no right or wrong way,” Fife says. “It’s all about how you feel in a space.” Does having clear countertops create a sense of calm for you? If so, keep them clear. Do you become easily frustrated when you can’t remember where something is? If so, maybe having everything placed in plain sight is preferable. cont. on page 13 SPRING 2020 | NORTHERN HOME
