Beauty Room Tour

Today's post is all about my beauty room. This room has gone though several transformations over the years. First, we painted it yellow and used it as our guest room. It then became a guest room/office for a while. Finally, when we were renovating our bathroom a few years ago I set up a mirror at the desk in here and made a little vanity for myself during construction. I loved getting ready in here so much that I created a permanent vanity area for myself in here and the room was transformed into my beauty room.

Here's a peek inside:

I get ready in here in the morning and also use this space to do the majority of my blogging and photography.

The vanity setup is mostly from Ikea. The desk is the Liatorp. I added a glass topper to prevent the white desktop from getting stained from makeup products. I think it gives it an elegant touch.

On my vanity, I have 4 of the MUJI 2-Drawer Acrylic Drawers stacked up. These drawers are slightly taller than the ever popular 5-Drawer system by MUJI. This makes them more versatile on what you can store in there. The top drawer is the lift-top version that I leave open so I can store my foundations and setting sprays upright. These are great quality and a great value. The US MUJI online store doesn't seem to be open right now but you can find these on Amazon or go to one of the US Stores.

To the left of my desk I have two of the Alex 6-drawers stacked. I like these compared to the 9-drawer version since the drawers are wider. I use this to store my makeup collection and accessories. I still have plenty of room left to grow.

I hope you enjoyed this peek inside my beauty room! I've been meaning to get this post up for a while now. I've been enjoying this space for about 3 years but alas, I'm being kicked out. This is the bedroom adjacent to the master bedroom so it is going to be the baby's room. It is actually empty in the process of being painted right now. I took these pictures over the summer. We moved the vanity, alex drawers and some of the decor upstairs to the guest room. I rearranged the furniture a bit in there and it actually fits quite nicely. While I'm sad to see this space go, it will be nice to have our little guy right next-door. I can't wait to share what I have in store for his nursery! Stay tuned!

Reference:

Paint: Behr, Moon Dance
Sunburst Mirror: Homegoods
Trifold Mirror: Pier 1
Foil Prints: I See Noise
Baies Candle: Nordstrom
Voluspa Candle: Bloomingdales
Orchid Quatrefoil Pillow: Motif Pillows
Purple Lattice Pillows: Dawns Decor & More
Bed: Ikea
Side Table: Target
Bedding: Target
Dress Form: PB Teen
Storage Drawers: Ikea
Desk: Ikea
Mercury Glass Jars: Anthropologie
Votives: Z Gallerie
Makeup Mirror: Target
Chair: Ikea
Faux Sheepskin Rug: Ikea
Chandelier: Home Depot

Spring Closet Clean Out

With the warmer weather finally upon us, I've been really motivated to get things neat and organized with some spring cleaning. Living in an older home, one thing we really struggle with is storage space. Each of the bedrooms has a closet, but it's a small one. Both of the downstairs closets came with one lower shelf but no upper shelf above the closet rod. I always thought this was such a waste of space so I enlisted Mike's help to install upper shelves in the downstairs bedrooms. 

We bought two pieces of plywood and cut them to size to fit each closet. I painted them white to match the trim and then Mike installed them with heavy duty shelf brackets.

The extra downstairs bedroom is basically my bonus room. There is a bed in there but it is also where my vanity is and it's where I get ready in the morning. We use this closet as overflow storage. I store my purses in there, my bathing suit cover-ups as well as our larger sweatshirts. I found these hanging circular organizers at Bed Bath & Beyond. I believe they're actually meant to store belts but I'm using them for handbags and baseball caps. They work like a charm!

Having the extra shelf up top has been awesome. I now have a place for my camera equipment, larger hats and board games. This freed up the bottom shelf and I now use that for shipping supplies for when I occasionally sell on eBay and Poshmark.

Moving on to the Master closet:

This closet is larger than the one in the guest bedroom. I remember when we bought the house this was advertised as being a "double closet" because the space extends on each side past the door, which is nice but I still managed to fill it to the brim. Seriously, the rod was sinking in the middle and was about to break. These are just my clothes too, Mike uses the upstairs closet which is about this size. This is where most of the clean out took place. I went through everything and got rid of about a third of my clothes. I made three discard piles: to toss, to donate and to sell. I organized what was left and we installed the upper shelf and some new shoe racks.

I'm using the upper shelf to store our extra bed pillows. These are the fancier ones that I put out when I fully make the bed. Before these were kind of shoved in the back on the bottom shelf and some of them were even in another closet. My hope with having them on top shelf is that they are more easily accessible and that it will inspire me to fully make our bed more often. We'll see!

When we moved in the previous owners had made a little shoe shelf for this closet. It was made out of warped particle board and to say the thing was rough is an understatement, I really should've taken a picture. I replaced them with these shoe racks from Target. 

Lastly I wanted to share my scarf organization. I got this cute little owl scarf organizer from Bed Bath & Beyond a few years ago. I keep all my lighter fashion scarves on him. 

Cleaning and organizing is oddly therapeutic to me. Although I put it off and it's an overwhelming task to think about, once it's done I feel so much better. I love having a place for everything and it's nice to have less "stuff" to worry about. I got rid of so many items that I hadn't worn in years that were just taking up space. I hope this helped give you some ideas on how to clean out and organize your closet. Have you done any spring cleaning this year?

ByAlegory Compact Organizer Review

I've been doing some re-organization of my makeup and was looking for some new storage options for my powders when I stumbled upon these acrylic compact organizers by the brand ByAlegory.

The organizers have eight spaces and can hold a wide variety of compacts. They actually come in six different colors. I picked up two of the clear acrylic ones to use for bronzers and highlighters. These fit nicely into the larger drawers of my Ikea Alex 6 drawer unit.

What Fits

The Dimensions of the total organizer are 8.6 x 3.5 x 2 inches. Inside compartment dimensions are 2.95 x .90 inches.

Most standard sized circular face powders fit nicely. Even some of my square powder compacts fit like my Laura Mercier Bronzing Pressed Powder, Tarte Amazonian Clay Bronzer and Nars blushes and highlighters. I chose to store bronzers and highlighters but blushes would also fit, just a little looser.

I tested this with MAC Mineralize Skinfinishes and found that they also fit nicely in the compact organizer. They are a little wider so they don't sit all the way to the bottom but they still fit and allow my drawer to close.

What doesn't fit

The Balm tall and wide powders (i.e. Bahama Mama, Hot Mama, Instain Blushes). To get technical these do fit sitting upright but that left too much room on the sides for my liking.

Nars Bronzers

Benefit Boxed Powders

Hourglass Ambient Lighting Powders

Wet n Wild To Reflect Shimmer Palettes

Wet n Wild Color Icon Bronzers

Final Thoughts

I really love these. They're sleek, well-made and an effective storage system that fits into my Ikea drawers. They're also pretty enough to keep out on my vanity.

I wish they were a little longer and had 12 slots. I was really hoping to be able to fit two of them back to back in my drawers but unfortunately there's not quite enough room.

Price is $17.89 each. They sell them via Amazon and they're also Prime eligible. Find them at byalegory.com.