THE NONNATIVE

I've said it before that I have so much junk jewelry in my flat that if I continue at this rate I might not have a place to live. A friend of mine recently expressed her need to "downsize", at which of course I was horrified and have since been insisting to her that downsizing is not the answer! But no, she wants to move in with her boyfriend and how could she possibly explain all of this stuff?!

Well... You don't. It just gradually creeps in, you hide things for a while, then they suddenly appear, "Babe is that a new dress?" You scoff at the suggestion of something new - me? Buy something new? When we live in such a small apartment? Hahaha oh no I would never buy anything new!

We have jewelry boxes, hydraulic beds, shelves, boxes, under sofa storage, we even have storage rooms to contain all of our stuff. I live in about 450sqft and it has been filled to 100% capacity of stuff. I'm talking about stuff packed inside of stuff, intricate packing that only I know where everything is - and I know where everything is.

My jewelry is by far the most untamed of all messes, everything else has a place and it tends to stay there. Jewelry is always strewn across the house, missing earrings, a stray bangle - despite how hard you try to keep it all in one place I find it to be pretty much impossible to get a system down. Some people like to splurge on buying a nice jewelry box with little compartments, while others (like myself) like a more visual storage system. Since Hong Kong is pretty much the home of cheap jewelry (Mong Kok necklaces @ $20/piece!), I thought storage solutions would be a helpful piece of information to share.

The first place I discovered crafty ways of storing jewelry was Ikea, while I despise the store layout and people in it, they do have some great products. An over the door hanging rack is incredibly handy, you can use it for belts, ties, scarves, or necklaces. The only real problem with this solution is that if you place it on the back of a door you frequently open and close things may come flying off! Up until a few months ago I was using the over the door hanger, this meant that all earrings, rings, and bracelets were left loose. I typically threw them into plastic bags, but that's pretty disastrous to do to cheap jewelry.


It was only a few months ago that while in Ikea I came across this beauty, a true jewelry tree! It's called STATIST, it's cute, it's functional and it's only $31HKD. As with all of Hong Kong's Ikeas it may be in one store but not in the other, I happened to discover this little treasure up at the Shatin Ikea. Now I regret not buying more!

There are a lot of other jewelry organizing methods, Japan Home always has something (they also sell over the door hanging racks), Wingon can sometimes yield exciting finds, but if all else fails there are simple do-it-yourself options.

Use a cutlery tray to easily organize jewelry. Although, if you have a lot of jewelry you'd need a lot of cutlery trays. DIYideas.com

Cardboard, cork, & a photo frame are used to make a visual jewelry display, as big or as small as you'd like! Joyfulabode.com

Just make sure that jewelry is slowly and gradually added to your visual storage. Men are like wild animals, if you move suddenly in erratic movements they'll startle and tend to attack. Keep calm, add more jewelry to the tree and he'll never notice the collection is growing!