#ManiMonday: My Nail Polish Stash and Storage

Anyone who knows me knows that I have what one might call an obsession with nail polish. It's the one beauty product I never need to buy ... and the one I can never seem to say no to once I'm inside a Sephora or Ulta. I've amassed quite the collection over the years, and for a long time I had a vision of displaying all of my gorgeous polishes in racks like you see in nail salons. I've wanted to do this since I lived in New York, but never made it happen ... UNTIL NOW. I finally made the leap and displayed all of my nail polish just the way I always wanted!

First, of course, I needed to decide upon the right nail polish racks. Honestly, this is what held me up for so long -- because nail polish racks are so darned expensive! I wanted ones that I knew were made well and were sturdy enough to hold all my bottles without crashing to the ground. I had horrifying visions of hundreds of bottles breaking open on my floor. So I kept researching and researching (and researching) until I decided upon the 96 Bottle Nail Polish Wall Rack Display from Amazon. It tends to vary a bit in price depending on what seller you choose, but I went with Beauticom (which you can buy here) and got my racks for around $25 each (they fluctuate between $25-$35 depending on when you purchase).

There's a long hallway right when you enter my apartment, which seemed like the absolute perfect place to display my collection. I just knew the racks would look perfect there! So next, of course, came the question of how many racks to buy. I went with three originally, but -- and I should have guessed this -- they didn't even come close to holding my full collection. So I ended up buying a fourth, and I must admit there are still polishes that don't fit in the racks, but four seemed like a good number.

And, no, I did not hang them all by myself -- because, to be honest, I'm too short and it's too difficult to hang things perfectly all alone! I had help from a couple fabulous friends and my equally fabulous brother.

My four nail polish racks displaying my collection. To the right you can see my Sex and the City Carrie shoe print, which I bought myself for Hannukah this past year.

And then the real fun began. How to organize my nail polish? All of these ways to organize went through my head...

By brand?
By color?
By color within brand?

I decided to organize my polish by brand, and then by color within the brand -- I just thought it would look the cleanest. I really didn't want to see different sized bottles next to each other as it seemed too messy. (I am SUPER Type A when it comes to displaying beauty products.) So, brand by brand, I spilled all of my polishes onto my floor and began organizing them by color. Here's how that looked...

So many nail polishes to organize, so little time.

This process was, as you might imagine, painstaking. I really wanted to make sure I was putting all of my polishes into the correct color order! Not that I couldn't rearrange them once they were in the racks, but I just wanted it to be perfect from the start. I would say each brand took about 20 minutes to finalize and get into the racks.

And then? Voila! The racks were complete. Here's a closer look at each rack...

Rack 1: Chanel, RGB, Rescue Beauty Lounge and butter LONDON. I decided to display all but the Chanel on their sides so I could really maximize the space -- otherwise I probably would have needed at least two more racks! I actually was able to get 117 bottles in this rack by doing that. And I knew I had a lot of Chanel, but, well ... I might still need more...

Rack 2: The remainder of my butter LONDON collection and most of my Zoya. I didn't actually realize just how many Zoya polishes I owned until I started putting them into the racks!

Rack 3: The remainder of my Zoya collection and all of my Essie. I definitely didn't know I had all those Essie reds -- and my greens are pretty impressive, too.

Rack 4: Deborah Lippmann, OPI and China Glaze. I had to be a little discerning with the China Glaze, since I ran out of room -- so I actually have more than that, but these are my absolute favorites (like Ruby Pumps, for example). I also put my OPI minis at the ends of the rows -- I like how they're just hanging in midair.

So that's my collection! Well, partially -- since I probably have about 150 more bottles that wouldn't fit (from Sephora by OPI, CND, more China Glaze, other random brands). But the grand total in the racks is...

422 NAIL POLISHES.

Even I'm flabbergasted by that number!

What do you think of my collection? How do you display your nail polish? Let me know in the comments!