Storing & Organising Your Perfumes

I put up two new shelves in my bathroom yesterday ... it's not gonna solve the problem completely as one of my kitchen cabinets is still overflowing LOL ... but at least there's room not to be so squashed anymore ... I'm thinking of adding a fragrance 'pantry' ... ah well ... I'm sure push will come to shove one of these fine days! Samples are a crazy issue tho' ... trying to wrap my brain around that one ...

I've made some progress on this front. I decided to consecrate some more of my furniture. I am now using two entire chests of drawers, in addition to the armoire, for my perfumes. They are alphabetized, but I have not finished and all of the drawers are already full. How can she have an entire "G" drawer of perfumes? you may ask.

I think that it may be time to pare down: give or swap away everything that is not a love. Of course, to solve the problem I'll have to do swaps at a two or three for one ratio...

I might just have a big mystery box lottery give away.

I am VERY organized: Everything is in a big pile!

I keep mine organized in the order in which I bought them -- samples go in line just like the rest, because I bought them too. I use a small cabinet I got at Lowe's which works a lot better upside down than right-side up. I also made my own shelf so that I would have enough shelves. Here's how it looked a few months ago (since then the collection has grown):

Currently I store them all in a chest of drawers, before that I used my wardrobe (the shirts had to go *g*).
In my opinion this has worked out good so far and I have them all easy at hand.
What annoys me a little is the fact that I never have them all in sight when pondering which one to wear (especially time-consuming in the mornings). Probably the only way to solve the problem is to buy a smaller wardrobe just for the perfumes..with nice shelves in it so they can be lined up similar as in a store (I need to wake up, am already dreaming again *g*).
Right now I have grouped them into chypres, orientals (the biggest part of my collection anyway), vanillas and summer scents (those are placed in the very rear of the drawer). However, I do not group them name-wise, brand-wise, colour-wise or anything. I need to perouse a bit.

While I am dreaming : How about a perfume room ? Mine would be in black, violet and burgundy *sigh*.

Nice idea! I'd love to dedicate a whole floor of my house to perfume. As long as we are fantasizing, let's go big!

Ok, fantasy mode, on:
A mansion, all the perfumes are stored in a temperature controlled finished basement. We're talking huge room, vaulted ceilings, authentic art work on the walls instead of windows to protect the frags from the light, the artificial lighting is soft and generates no heat.

To choose a scent of the day, I whip out my Ipad and go to my frag app. A menu appears with pics of all the bottles, notes, impressions, reviews. When I click "choose", an elevator (much like the kind that brings dishes from a kitchen to a dining room) brings the bottle right to my dresser.

Damn. I was sooooo meant to be independently wealthy, lol.

I have a whole room assigned to my perfumes, but over the last half a year or so it turned from nicely organized to a huge mess, which actually started spreading all over the house. I think my buying rate has been way higher than testing speed, so in an attempt to separate the bottles that have been tested, have not been tested, and need retesting, I ended up with these islands of bottles all over the house.

I really need to get my stuff together and reorganize everything. I plan to organize everything by houses now, because keeping it separate according to olfactory families does not work any more. Some families are way too huge to be kept in one spot, and it's too confusing what to wear.....spend too much time on head-scratching and contemplating over the scent of the day. I am planning to start wearing one house a week, or something like that.

Another reason i have to organize everything ASAP is when I don't see it, I don't know what the hell I have....so before grabbing a deal on Ebay, i have to consult my virtual wardrobe on Fragrantica to make sure I don't have it already.

To sum it up, I am a mess!

I recently started storing fbs alphabetically by house in basket drawers in a dresser in my bedroom. Works fine except I've already filled them up My vintage bottles, sizable decants and minis are stored in a small antique cupboard. My samples are in boxes. Love the pantry idea but don't have the space right now.

I am so "lucky" that I have only a couple of them, so don't face such problems whether I need to sort them alphabetically in order to find what I'm looking for... I just keep them all in my wardrobe on the shelf along with makeup and cosmetics, they are all in their original boxes, in dark, away from light and heat. They feel good there although I would like to keep them exposed.

I finally got on the step ladder and started organizing my mess by the house....put together AG, Annayake, and Prada. Not much, but the first step is made

I have an armoire with my fragrances organised by families per shelf and then categories in that family going from left to right. So my floral shelf for instance starts with jasmine heavy on the left, then rose etc. Orientals, vanilla heavy moving to spicy and so on. The narrow drawers in it contain samples, the deeper drawers at the bottom, pure parfums. Thankfully , I have a good memory and remember exactly what I have and where it is at any given moment. Phew!!

Working on arranging my perfumes by houses....OMG, I have not realized how bad it is. And considering I have mostly 50 and 100 ml bottles, the amount of everything is pretty intimidating!

I am discovering all kinds of stuff here A lot of bottles still have cellophane wrapper on, and most of the bottles don't even have a dent of usage....and I wear perfume 24/7. I think I am ready to open a perfume store.

To make things worse, my husband keeps popping in my perfume room and making fun of me.....asking if I need extra boxes and telling me that he hid a few of my bottles and if I can figure out which ones

I have mine stored in two armoires that I purchased just for this purpose. The way they are stored in the armoires changes often because I've not found an arrangement that I really like yet.

Currently they are stored by: armoire #1: strictly high end fragrances that I love with all my heart and would never swap, sell or get rid of under any circumstances. armoire #2: high end, designer, etc. that I love but would change allegiance if something really, really tempting came along.

I'd love to reorganize and place them by color or family or something like that, but I've not gotten around to that yet. Maybe I'll do it after I relocate to my new home.

He obviously knows you very well, Olga1780.

My out of season perfumes are stored in a cedar closet in the basement. At the moment, those would be the citrus-based ones and the ultra-light perfumes that I reserve for the hottest days of summer.

Gifts from my husband live on my dresser.

I keep the remainder of my perfumes in an armoire with four shelves. I divide my collection between work perfumes and fragrances for night and the weekend, which are heavier. The two shelves closest to eye level contain favorites and the ones I use less frequently live closer to the floor. Small bottles are stored in the front and taller ones in the back so it's easier to see what I have.

I keep mine in a couple of drawers in my dresser - in their boxes, if I have them. They're organized by the "tetris principle" to make room for a s many as possible. That means boxes on top of boxes, bottles tuck in every small open space between boxes, etc. etc....
I keep decants in the drawers too, in a couple of old cigar boxes.
For the time being the perfumes I mostly use in the summer are in a box in the bottom of my wardrobe. Not too far away from the rest in case I want to wear them.
I have a box with compartments for samples, not unlike the one Guusje displayed. Mine is in 3 layers and doesn't take up much space. There's no system in my samples at all. I tried, but had to give up on that!
For the past 3 months I've kept my minis on display. There's a niche with glass shelves in the living room, and they look cute there. I'm trying to force myself to wear them now (I'm always afraid to use them up).

www.parfumo.com/Users/Cincy/Picture/18396

Now I have to add and arrange.

That's a beautiful arrangement you have there, Cincy.

Thanks Cryptic, I have moved things around since I took that pic. Maybe I should confess and say everyday I move one to another shelf.

Dlane1953, My vintage oak display cabinet is in my bathroom, sitting between to basins. I have no windows in there. I only use my overhead shower light. I wanted to put my display case on my vanity in the bedroom, but I have 2 extra large windows, so way to much light.

This cabinet hangs or stands. Yes, I want another one to hang on my wall in the bathroom. The bathroom is large therefore I have a lot of wall space. I bought mine at an estate auction and the price was right.

I hope you find what you are looking for, post when you do.

I don't have a problem with mine, as don't have many perfumes. They are in the bedroom, so have mine ALL in there original boxes, and I have Two lovely big boxes I store them in, in my wardrobe. I have smaller boxes for my samples. Now the winter is here, my bedroom is cold, as don't like heating in the bedroom), so have the ones I wear often on my dressing table. I wouldn't have the room for a huge collection anyway, as live in a small Apt.