ORIGINALLY CREATED: MAY 24, 2020
SO! In my Productivity in the Midst of Quarantine post, I mentioned waiting on some drawer organizers for my Ikea Alex furniture. Well, they finally came in! I purchased three organizers from Vanity Collection: 1) lipstick organizer, with tiered slots; 2) modular organizer, where you can decide what you want and where; and 3) palette organizer, for compacts and palettes.
Now let me get RIGHT to the frustration of this process in hopes of saving someone some heartache. Be very careful when ordering these things! Not only are measurements key, but you MUST pay attention to the size of the products you’re planning to organize. Originally, I thought I covered my bases and ordered the right things, but I completely overlooked the size of my products and that led to restructuring my design and a waste of money as far as I’m concerned.
I specifically wanted all of my makeup to go into my Ikea Alex 6-drawer. I loved the idea of having everything in one place. So, when I ordered the lipstick organizer, I first made sure that the dimensions would fit my drawer. Vanity Collections does have Ikea compatible pieces for this unit, but not for lipsticks. I chose to use the piece made for the 9-drawer unit since the depth and width of that piece matched mine. What I didn’t consider was that the height actual 9-drawer is taller than that of the 6-drawer, meaning that while my liquid lipsticks could easily stand in the 9-drawer, they would have to be laid down in my 6-drawer. Heartbreaking news as the pieces were already ordered and could not be returned.
So, I ended up scrapping my original plan and swapped my proposed hair accessory drawer with my lipstick drawer. It’s obviously not the end of the world, but just not what I wanted. In the end that worked out. What didn’t was the compact organizer…
Pretty much the same issue here as the lipsticks– my palettes were too tall/broad for the organizer, so I had to clutter another drawer in order to make it work. Of course, I forgot to take a picture, but I hated it! I was forced to leave that drawer half empty and over pack another one, which would’ve defeated the purpose of seeing all my products. So, I decided to scrap it. The end result is not my ideal but much more favorable as I can see more of my products. I still needed to have a drawer dedicated to the larger palettes but they’re at least visible.
My last comment will be a design flaw with the Alex drawers that you should bare in mind if you’re interested in purchasing. The measured depth of these drawers are accurate; however, the drawers don’t extend all the way out. So, you won’t readily see the back 3-4″ of the drawer and whatever you have in there. If you’re using them to house longer items like notebooks or something, this won’t bother you, but it probably will for smaller items. They’re still great drawers, but that definitely gets annoying.
