Makeup Matters
Organize
After you've sorted, don’t just throw it all back into a basket or drawer. Lay everything you’re hanging onto out on a table, and separate into categories: face, cheeks, eyes and lips. Bonus points (and eventually, more saved time) if you organize by color!
Buy
Purchase a variety of containers in a variety of shapes and sizes, one for each type of makeup. Make sure all are clear, so you can easily locate what you’re looking for. The Container Store has some great see-through options, because let’s face it: Moms have no time for digging around!
Drawers
You probably have one makeup drawer already, and you should definitely utilize it for day-to-day items, but consider finding another for storage. Put cosmetics you use only on rare occasions (say, glittery eyeshadow for holiday parties) here, along with seasonal makeup, like that peach-pink lipstick you’re saving for summer.
Tall Tubes
Use cylinder containers—like the ones you probably use to hold pens and pencils—to keep mascara, tall tubes of lip gloss, and eye and lip pencils easily accessible. Otherwise, they’ll slip through cracks to the bottom of the drawer. (Read: They’ll be unfindable.)
Blush & Powder
For your small, square-shaped cosmetics, opt for long trays that you can place on top of each other in a drawer, instead of smaller, deeper containers that you’ll have to stack your cosmetics inside. Stacking cosmetics will undo your organization job in a hurry when you toss around makeup looking for the right blush—at the bottom of the container.
MORE: Makeup That Won't Smudge
Palettes
Long, skinny palettes with many shades of lip color or eye shadow are too large to go in a container. Just slide these in along the sides of the drawer, tucking them into empty spaces.
