I have my swatches sorted by brand but it is overwhelming when I look to find a dupe in my collection (we have that at home!) How do I organize these to know what I have? By color, by finish (magnetic, thermal, flakies, etc)! This is just my Zoya collection! Or do I have too much polish?!?! Is there such a thing?!?!
by Glum_Material3030
3 Comments
I have almost 900 polishes, and I finally am like “I think I’m good for polishes” 😛
My preferred sorting method is to sort my swatches by color and the bottles by brand.
The logic is: when I go to find a color, I’m not usually thinking “I want to paint my nails with OPI”. I’m thinking “I want a nice purple color”
So, I can look at my purple swatches, and find what I want.
And if I ever DO want to look just at one brand, then I can either look at my spreadsheet (I can remember what most of the colors are), or I can rummage around the OPI drawer(s).
I do a ring of special effects (thermal, solar, glow in the dark); a ring of magnetics (two swatches each: velvet and cat eye); a ring of plain jellies and cremes; a ring of clear/gliitters and toppers; and a ring for everything else. Not sure if that is helpful lol
I hope there’s not such a thing as too much 😅 I love your color choices btw!
I would think about how you use them and what will be most helpful when you’re looking for a particular polish. Do you remember a specific polish and look for it, like, “I want to wear House of Hades by Mooncat”? Or do you think “I want to wear a purple with blue flakies”? If you’re doing nail art or looking for a similar color or checking to see if you already have something in your collection like the new pretty that you’re coveting, then I think it makes the most sense to organize by color and finish. It sounds like you already have them organized by brand and that doesn’t work as well as you’d like it to.
Since you’re going to go through the process of reorganizing them, I’d also separate them by finish. You can always consolidate them later if you decide you don’t need that much segregation in the future, but while you’re doing it, might as well do it more specifically and you can more easily combine them if you find that you don’t need that much separation. Also, having them really specifically separated might give you insights like “wow, I have a lot of red /pink magnetics… maybe I don’t need to buy any more of those for a while.”, or “I have hardly any blue/green glitters. Do I not like and wear those? Or do I need to consider getting some to fill this hole in my collection?”