There are many ideas and options for organizing and storing your jewelry. A search on Pinterest can yield an abundance of ideas and solutions. And a search on Google can also bring up quite a long list too. Some ideas are the standard jewelry box that you would keep on top of your dresser and other solutions are clever DIY projects. I love looking at all these options especially those that re-purpose cool vintage items like mid matched China tea cups. However I always come back to my favorite way to organize and store jewelry. I love stack-able trays.
There are several tray styles to choose from. Cost will depend on what you like, what you want to invest and perhaps if it fits in with your decor. Almost all fine jewelry stores use trays to store and move jewelry around. Even if it’s not fine jewelry why not care for it and store it so it stays in good condition? Here are my top reasons why I LOVE trays for jewelry storage and organization. The ones I used in my photos are textured linen and have a pad in the bottom. The neutral color will work well in with a lot of decorating schemes.
1. Lightweight. Trays are lightweight and yet sturdy and durable. Lightweight is good so that by the time you put jewelry in them, they are still easy to maneuver.
2. Inexpensive. These are very inexpensive, about $2.00 to $7.00 each. So you can buy plenty to adequately organize and store your jewelry. And since they are fairly lightweight, they are not too expensive to ship. Check out some options here.
3. Extremely space efficient. You can get a lot of jewelry in each tray. And because they stack, you can get a lot of trays stacked on a shelf in your closet, or in a drawer. There is very little wasted space. You can even store them under your bed, just be sure to buy an extra tray, to go on top to keep the dust out. I like to take an extra step and keep each piece of jewelry in a clear plastic zip lock Baggie. This way each piece is protected and always double bag earrings. They are sold in packs of 100 in a variety of sizes. For example the pack of 4×4 inch size bags cost under $3.00. Jewelry supply carries those too, check them out here.
4. Work well at keeping like pieces together. These are so great at organizing your jewelry. As you know I like to “merchandise” my jewelry, which means I keep like pieces together in a curated fashion. For example all my gold metal pieces are in a tray, all my silver in another. I keep all my red and pink jewelry in another tray, etc. So depending on your style, and your jewelry you may have completely different categories. When you sort by era or vibe or color, it’s much easier to find all the related pieces you might want to wear together.
5. Stack-able feature helps them “anchor”  into place. One of the best features about stack-able trays is that they are designed to nest into each other, ever so slightly to stabilize them when they are stacked. Plastic trays are (not shown here) are molded so that when you stack them, the feet on the bottom “set” or slide into place. Then when you want to move a few trays that are stacked on top of each other,  they are easy to move and won’t slide around or tumble off onto the floor. This is one of the best features for the black plastic trays, the molded feet. The plastic trays are not “the prettiest girl at the ball”, but they are very utilitarian and are one of the most affordable trays around. However, I really like the more luxurious look of these fabric trays I used for this post. You can check out the plastic trays here and the fabric trays here.
The plastic trays above: they are really sturdy, affordable and stack really well. See the 3rd photo above with showing the “foot” that anchors into the lower tray.
6. Keeps dust and dirt from penetrating your jewelry. I love some of the ideas I see on the Internet to store and “display” jewelry. One if my favorites is taking a vintage frame and setting it up to hang all your necklaces. But, every place I have lived, I have trouble with dust and dirt as I like to keep my windows open all the time. So I really don’t want to have to wipe down or clean pieces because the are out in the open all the time. So while this looks nice and is a fun way to display jewelry, I subscribe to finding a place to put most of your jewelry away in a place that protects it from dust and dirt. These trays are simply dandy for that. If you have certain pieces that you wear every day, then I think its fine to have a special place or dish to put them when you are not wearing them.
7. Label each tray to your liking. This is where you need to get a little creative. Most of the trays don’t come with place set up for labeling. So, get creative and come up with a way to make your own label or way to identify what’s in a tray. Maybe a colored ribbon or an inspiration photo on the end.
8. Makes it easy to manage your jewelry while you are determining what to wear. Meaning that your pieces are corralled in a tray and if you want to take several items out for consideration, you can easily take out the whole tray and work out of the tray. Or work out of 2 or 3 trays side by side. You can easily go to another room, get an opinion from another family member or room mate. It will prevent pieces getting dropped, or worse, getting broken or lost.
9. Versatility. If you ever want to change the way your sorted the jewelry, it is really easy to do so. Want to add more trays? Order a few more, it is easy to add on to this solution.
What do you think of organizing jewelry in stack-able trays? Would you use them? Leave a comment below.