Organize This: Makeup

In fourth grade I played Gertrude in The Little Princess at the community theatre. I think I had three lines. “Did you he-yuh, Sara Crewe arroived in the meedle of the noight!” My British accent was impressive. And to this day, the line no one in my family fully remembers, but everyone likes to quote is “Freels and freels!” Something about all of Sara’s beautiful clothes. The fam thought “Frills and frills!” a very fitting line for fourth-grade Amy.

I may have been a bit of a priss.

But as much a girly-girl as I was, I didn’t turn out to be high maintenance. Case in point: every now and then I catch a good look at myself in the mirror and realize my eyeshadow is slightly off, or I have a little smudge of mascara above my left eye. To blame is the fact that I slap my makeup on in 7.3 seconds flat, apply it in low-light (I hate overhead light in the morning), and/or stand at least three feet from the mirror from behind our bulgingly large bathroom vanity. So really, the smudge above my left eye is the bathroom counter’s fault.

But recently I discovered the joy of sitting down and doing my makeup!

While our bathrooms were torn apart for updates, I plopped my hand-me-down free Clinque bag next to our full length mirror, and sat Indian-style on the floor to put on makeup.

Oh man! Do you sit down to do your makeup? Because if you don’t, you should. Suddenly the chore turned into a relaxing ritual. I lingered.

So with this new-found discovery, I dragged my old school desk from what is now my favorite nook in the house, put it in front of our closet door which always stays open anyway, and unloaded my hand-me-down Clinque freebie into drawers.

With organizers! You know how I love containing things.

Then I put hair stuff and extra make-up in the bottom drawer.

(Including the Max Factor eyeshadow kit I dug out of a box in the basement sometime in middle school and thought I’d struck gold. It was my mom’s. I can’t seem to get rid of this 30-year-old eyeshadow.)

This folding case that came with foot spa accoutrements has been even handier for organizing extra makeup.

Now I sit on my little thrifted storage cube, pull my hair dryer from the door handle…

daintily open drawers full of oh-so-organized beauty products…

and primp. And I take my time. Oh, it’s good to sit.