Organize Your Makeup, Now

If you’ve ever decided to forgo makeup in the morning, be honest: Was it because you just didn’t feel like hassling with your messy makeup drawer? Application is only half the battle of a morning routine. If your cosmetic drawer looks like a cyclone whirled through it, you’ll spend twice as long getting ready. Set aside an hour and completely organize your space. Here’s how to streamline, save time and prettify.

Makeup doesn’t last forever. Go through your stash, tossing anything that’s dried up, broken or outdated—or that you just don’t wear anymore. In general, you should toss mascara after four months, concealer and foundation after one year, powder and blush after two years, lipstick after two years, and eye and lip pencils after three years.

After you've sorted, don’t just throw it all back into a basket or drawer. Lay everything you’re hanging onto out on a table, and separate into categories: face, cheeks, eyes and lips. Bonus points (and eventually, more saved time) if you organize by color!

RELATED: The 5-Minute Makeup Routine … Really!

Purchase a variety of containers in a variety of shapes and sizes, one for each type of makeup. Make sure all are clear, so you can easily locate what you’re looking for. The Container Store has some great see-through options, because let’s face it: Moms have no time for digging around!

You probably have one makeup drawer already, and you should definitely utilize it for day-to-day items, but consider finding another for storage. Put cosmetics you use only on rare occasions (say, glittery eyeshadow for holiday parties) here, along with seasonal makeup, like that peach-pink lipstick you’re saving for summer.

Use cylinder containers—like the ones you probably use to hold pens and pencils—to keep mascara, tall tubes of lip gloss, and eye and lip pencils easily accessible. Otherwise, they’ll slip through cracks to the bottom of the drawer. (Read: They’ll be unfindable.)

For your small, square-shaped cosmetics, opt for long trays that you can place on top of each other in a drawer, instead of smaller, deeper containers that you’ll have to stack your cosmetics inside. Stacking cosmetics will undo your organization job in a hurry when you toss around makeup looking for the right blush—at the bottom of the container.

MORE: Makeup That Won't Smudge

Long, skinny palettes with many shades of lip color or eye shadow are too large to go in a container. Just slide these in along the sides of the drawer, tucking them into empty spaces.

A long, skinny container is ideal for storing these bottles, but a rectangle shape works well, too. The key is to stand them up, not lay them down, so you can grab the right one in a flash and put it right back.

RELATED: Beauty on a Budget

Pots of lip balm and eyeliner, along with regular-size tubes of lipstick, can go in the same location. They’re not particularly stackable or organizable, but are compact enough that you should be able to easily see them and pick them out of a shallow box or longer tray. Also, if you’ve dropped dough on lipsticks housed in pretty tubes, show them off! Leave a few of the ones you use all the time on your countertop on a mirrored tray. You can do this with fragrance bottles, too. Lovely, and couldn’t be more accessible.