Pimp My Ikea Helmer: Fancy Getting Creative With Your Makeup Storage?

No matter how much makeup you think you have, I can confidentally assure you that your collection is but a teeny fraction of a split atom on the surface of some of the biggest makeup collections in the world.

How am I so sure?  Well pay a little visit to Specktra, the home of the most obsessive makeup collectors around.  Mostly concerned with all things Mac, they also love a whole lot of Nars, Urban Decay and... yeah, mostly Mac

Have a look at just some of one person's Mac collection for example.

Unboggle your eyes.  She has every palette, every pigment, every shadow, lipstick, blusher, pencil, brush and limited edition you can conceive of (this is only some of it).

I can only assume that the above picture was taken from a great height to fit everything in.  Here's a close up of a bit of it.

So how is it all stored?  Makeup obsessives love nothing better than to catalogue and display their collections.  They fit magnetic storage to their bedroom walls, they get custom pigment holders carved for them by their grandad, they stack and stack and cram clear acrylic storage and Ikea flatpack furniture into every nook and cranny they can find.

Below: a clever use of mixed storage - note the spice rack,  these are brilliant for displaying nail varnish.

Muji is usually the go to for clear acrylic storage, while Ikea, our Swedish overlords of functional furniture are loved by makeup junkies for two pieces of kit in particular - the Helmer and the Alex.

Below we can see how the Alex unit has been used in different sizes to hold kajillions of makeup.

The humble Ikea Helmer is a simple  filing cabinet that comes in three colours and works perfectly well untouched.  But when you see the lengths creative folk can go to to upscale and customise their cabinets it looks stunning.

At the moment I am pretty much Ikea'd out when it comes to storage - I only wish I had the patience to do such stunning decoupage and painting and the rest.  I'd be up for some wallpapering though and I think the numbered stenciling looks great and surely you could do that with stickers.  Has anyone tried this?

So at the moment I have  Ikea bathroom cabinets with Godmorgan inserts (above), a couple of the big Homestore & More acrylic three drawer sets (I LOVE these, I will update the post with pics of them) and an Alex unit.  I've written more about some of the ways I store my stuff in the Irish Times today, check it out.

But - and this is the shame that dare not speak its name... there is a LOT of stuff in ugly plastic containers under the beds, that I have to haul out and root through whenever I'm writing about a particular topic.

So tell me.  Do you live in disorganised chaos, or won't put up with anything less than serried banks of beautifully arranged storage.  And what form of storage would complete you?

You can see more about storage in Beauty Call in the Irish Times.