My Makeup Storage // IKEA Malm Dressing Table

Hi Ladies! I hope you're all well and are looking forward to Easter this weekend. Today was my last day at work for a whole six days and I'm so excited to have some time off. I feel like I've not had any 'me' time for a long, long time so I'm very much looking forward to being a lady of leisure and chilling out. My mum and sister are coming to visit on Friday too, so I'm very much looking forward to spending some quality time with them.

Anyway, before I go off on a tangent (I have a tendency to not know when to stop rambling), I'll get back to the focus of this post. As a beauty hoarder, makeup storage is a necessity and standard makeup bags just don't cut it anymore hence the need for 'makeup storage' - if you're not a beauty addict like me then yes, I realise this will sound insane. For such a long time I was really unhappy with my makeup set up and storage which I blogged about here in a really old post. It was messy, unorganised and squished into a teeny tiny black Argos dressing table and a set of Muji acrylic drawers. When I first got my Muji drawers I was really impressed with them but as my makeup collection grew and grew, everything was overflowing and before I knew it I was surrounded by a swarm of makeup and various other beauty products.

With this being said, I knew I had to find a new form of storage. I tried my hand at wicker baskets and boxes but was never satisfied with how it looked. I'd always dreamed (yes, I really am that sad) of having a big white dressing table with a glass top after seeing similar ones on other blogs and Youtube channels. For me personally white dressing tables look very serene, clean and classy so I knew when I got around to buying a new one, I'd be replacing my small, dark and dingy black one with a pretty white one. After doing lots of research online to find my perfect dressing table, I decided on a high gloss white one with three large drawers down either side. I thought it was fabulous but the £300+ price tag was certainly off putting. However, I ordered it regardless and patiently awaited for it to arrive. Whilst waiting for the postman to deliver said dressing table, I found myself watching Estee's (Essie Button if you don't already know) Youtube video about her makeup collection (you can find that video here) and I fell head over heels in love with her dressing table. It was perfect and exactly what I'd been looking for. She said in the video it was the IKEA Malm dressing table so I quickly headed over to the IKEA website to have a search for it. Much to my surprise, it only cost £95 and I knew there and then that this was the one I wanted. Within minutes the £300+ dressing table had been cancelled and I was on my way to IKEA to hunt down the MALM.

If you hadn't already guessed from the bazillions of photos above, I managed to hunt it down and I couldn't be happier with it. Its a fairly large dressing table (almost twice the size of my previous one) and it has a large pull out drawer and a glass surface. I think it looks very sleek, neat and tidy and I couldn't wait to set about organising my makeup and making it look pretty. I decided I wanted to keep the surface of the dressing table looking relatively simple and uncluttered so I tried to keep things on the surface to a minimum. On the left hand side I've kept a couple of Muji drawers for palettes that won't fit into the big drawer, and all of my current skincare (and a couple of hair goodies) sit on top. I tend to switch my skincare up all the time so this is a good area for me to keep things I'm using regularly. I then store all of my makeup brushes next to the Muji drawers and I've separated them into 'face' and 'eye' pots. The face pot is a glass vase from Ikea and the eye pot is a pen pot from Muji, both as cheap as chips. I then keep a mirror in the middle (a dressing table wouldn't be complete without one of those) and on the right hand side I keep another Muji pot, this time the Acrylic desk pot to store my cotton pads, a flower for some added girlyness and a few daily essentials like deodorant, Caudalie cleaning water and hairspray. I've also popped my favourite 'Miss Dior' perfume on there as the bottle is just beautiful and some cute little tea lights for decoration purposes (as you do!). Finally, I keep a large silver light next to the dressing table which is super bright and I use this when applying makeup at night time.

Moving on the large drawer, I decided this would be the perfect place to store all of my makeup. I also picked up the IKEA Malm drawers (£75) when I was mooching around Ikea to store all of my jewellery and other beauty goodies (hair care, skin care, nail polishes and all those other lovely beauty bits) which you can see in the corner of my first photo but I'll save that for another post or I'll be here all day. When it came to organising my makeup into the drawer, I wanted to buy some partitions I could pop inside to keep my makeup in organised sections. Gosh, I sound like some sort of crazy makeup mad woman! Ikea came up trumps again for this and I bought myself three of their Antonius basket inserts which are essentially just plastic boxes with 5 different sized compartments. They only cost £1.70 a piece which is a total bargain and a very cheap method of storing makeup. Unfortunately, I couldn't manage to fit all three of the inserts into the drawer so my boyfriend and I had to chop a piece off one of them so they would all fit. This means I technically have 2 and 3/4 inserts in the drawer, incase you're wondering why the 'eye' products insert is missing a section. 

I thought I'd give you a closer look at whats in each of the Antonius basket inserts, how I've organised my makeup into them and a brief overview of whats in each. Lets start with lip products (my favourite):

Lip Products

Okay so this is probably the section I was most excited to organise as lip products are my ultimate makeup weakness. If you can't already tell from the madness above, I love them and can't stop spending my money on them. As MAC lipsticks are my favourite, I decided a section would have to be dedicated to them and as you can see, they all fit in there perfectly (with the exception of one random Illamasqua one, oops!). I've put them in upside down too so I can see the name of each which has been really handy. I've then put my YSL, Topshop and Revlon lip butters together (more favourites of mine) and other miscellaneous lipsticks have all been bunged together in another section with lip balms. I then have two sections for lipglosses, my Rimmel Apocalips and a few lip pencils. This is definitely my favourite section and looking at it gives me a huge sense of satisfaction. Don't judge me!

Face Products

The next section of my drawer contains everything 'face' related so this is everything from foundation to blush. I also keep primer, concealer, powder, bronzer and highlighters in this drawer. Considering I'm not much of a blush person and tend to stick to the same set of face products at all times, I was quite shocked by how full this section is. I guess thats what you get for being a beauty blogger. I also didn't realise I had quite so many MAC face products until I started clearing products out from my Muji drawers. They do look very pretty all lined up next to each other though. Again, this gives me a weird sense of satisfaction (what a creep!).

Eye Products

If you haven't already guessed, this section contains all things eyes. To be honest, I tend to stick with my eyeshadow palettes so I don't have an insanely big collection of eye shadows. I have a couple of eyeshadow duos from NARS, some Maybelline colour tattoos, Barry M, MAC and NYX pigments, a couple of cheap palettes, my MAC quad and various other eye kits including my beloved Benefit Brow Zings. I then have a whole section dedicated to eyeliners and mascaras which is a bit ridiculous to be honest, who needs this many? I think this section will be getting a clear out soon. Finally I've popped all of my 'beauty tools' including eyelash curlers, false lash glue, a sharpener and tweezers in their own little compartment.

Palettes

At the very end of the drawer there was a little gap so I thought this was the perfect place to store a few of my eyeshadow palettes including the Urban Decay NAKED 1 and 2 palettes and my Inglot palette which I'm yet to finish filling. I could only fit these three in the drawer so I've popped my MAC palette and Stila in the Light palette in the Muji drawers on top of my dressing table. I thought it would be handy to keep a couple of Muji drawers up there for any 'overflow' I end up with from this drawer. Yes I know, as if I don't have enough makeup already 8).

Makeup Bags

Finally I thought I'd include a photo of the makeup bags I often use for keeping my 'every day' makeup inside or for travelling. They were both really cheap from Primark and I absolutely love them, just look at the cute designs. I tend to use the 'beauty' one for travelling and the floral Cath Kidston esque one for keeping my everyday makeup in. I don't always use it for every day makeup but if I'm being lazy and know I'll be using the same products all week, I tend to pop them all in there. It saves me an extra five minutes before work in the morning which means an extra five minutes in my cosy bed. OH YEAH!!

So there we have it guys, my new dressing table and makeup storage. I'm really pleased with how it looks and I couldn't wait to share it with you all as I personally love being nosy and having a snoop at how other people store their makeup. I've only had it all set up for the past few days but its already made getting ready much easier. I love the fact I can now open one big drawer and clearly see where everything is in organised sections. If you're ever in IKEA or are after a new dressing table, I can't recommend the MALM enough. It really is my dream dressing table and for £95 its a total bargain too!

I hope you've enjoyed having a sneak peek at my set-up and collection and if you'd like to see how I organise my jewellery and other beauty products into the tall MALM drawers, just let me know!

How do you organise your makeup? Do you like what I've done with mine?

Lots of Love,