Cork Board Jewelry Organizer

I am lucky brad puts up with me most of the time. It has never been a secret that I am not the tidiest person. And while I swear that I have not become any MORE of a slob since meeting Brad, he has most definitely become less of a slob since meeting me. Not that he ever was one, but now he is the exact opposite of slob. So whatever tiny amount of slob he had hiding in him was decreased.

To zero.

I often remind Brad that when we first met I lived in my own apartment and I would let dishes pile up for days. I would do laundry and then lay the clothes out in a neat pile so they wouldn’t be too wrinkly, and then I would probably wear most of the clothes before ever actually putting the pile away. I let water glasses pile up on my nightstand until I realized I was out of glasses in the kitchen and I’d go on a scavenger hunt throughout my apartment to bring them all back to one place.

He knew what he was in for from the start, I tell him.

Somewhere along the way, Brad started working in kitchens and started having to come face to face with health inspectors. He started sharing with me all of the heath code violations I was making and he started walking around behind me in our apartment, picking up and putting away things I’d left in my path.

Nowadays it has become a sort of joke (I’m sure he doesn’t find it funny…) that I will put down a glass of water for thirty seconds before it is in the sink and probably getting cleaned. The other day I even set down a banana peel with half a banana left in it for a split second and had to fight to get back those last few banana bites. When we have company I often check the laundry basket to see if he got overexcited cleaning and put some extra clothes in there. It’s happened more than once that Sarah has left town and I have done laundry a week later to find that she had also been subject to the wrath of Brad’s cleaning.

But since we moved into the new apartment, i will admit that my jewelry situation has become absolutely ridiculous. Not only was ALL of my jewelry missing for a few weeks, but once it was finally found my dresser permanently looked like this:

One big knot of chains and charms and hooks and clasps. Not only was nearly everything attached to each other, but it was too stressful to look at so I usually just went without.

Until one day I caved. I just wanted to wear my necklaces. And my ‘organized chaos’ was getting absurd.

I decided to take a bigger idea I had for an inspiration board in our living room and make a mini version to organize every chain, jewel, and sparkle.

Enter, more uses for wedding craft supplies! More recycling crafts! Woo!

First, I went to Staples and bought two packs of the 4×4 inch cork board tiles. Then I drew two straight lines in pencil on the wall with a level to mark where I would stick the tiles. The packs each came with self adhesive squares that were super easy to apply. This project was cake. The hardest part was getting the squares to look even.

Viola!!

I stuck in a few push pins, using the bottom tiles for all of my long necklaces and the top tiles for hanging earrings from twine tied from pin to pin.

Then I braved the unraveling of the heaps of jewelry that weren’t just on my dresser, but hidden away in the drawers as well. This was not an easy task. I would say about 90% of the time spent on this craft was spent working on tiny, chain knots. Thank god for my nails and for tiny fingers. Ugh.