organizing the bling

I've been on an organizing and cleaning kick lately.  Spring cleaning, I guess?  I'd like to think that I keep a pretty neat and organized house, but life happens.  And every now and then stuff piles up and in order to maintain my sanity, I have to get things reorganized back under control.

My latest project was reorganizing my jewelry and hair stuff.  My old "system" was to throw it all in a drawer and forget about it.  And admittedly, that did work for a while...mostly because once I shut that drawer, I didn't have to look at it.  So it was easy to forget what a mess it was in there.  Unfortunately, that meant that it was also easy to forget what jewelry I had to start with.  Then while browsing on Pinterest, I came across a brilliant solution.  A DIY jewelry organizer made from a cutlery tray...genius.

Here is my version:

Just like the inspiration post, I started with a bamboo cutlery tray (I picked mine up at Walmart for around $8).  But instead of screw-in cup hooks, I used plastic adhesive hooks.  I was so afraid that the screws would split the wood, so the adhesive hooks worked well.  Then I just spray painted the whole thing white.  I added sawtooth hangers to the back and hung it up on the wall.  Easy!  The hardest part was waiting for the paint to dry in between coats.  I'm not the most patient person.

It's great for my jewelry and the two hooks I added in the bottom compartment are great for holding my hair elastics and headbands.  I'm still looking for a cute tiny little tray or cup to hold my earrings and rings (instead of the little cardboard boxes you see in the photo...that's all I had at the time).  But for now, it serves it's purpose.  And it freed up the drawer that I was using before.  Bonus!!  Now I can hide some other stuff away in there.