Travel-proofing your jewellery.

Life is quite hectic for me at the moment, as in a couple of days I am leaving this country and my home, pretty much for good. I will be visiting every few months, but I will never live here again. Needless to say, that takes a lot of organising, reorganising, packing things, throwing things out and sorting out the things I will be leaving behind and the things my parents will post to me later on, as it's quite impossible for me to fit everything in a suitcase. It's also a pretty emotional time for me, as I have to say goodbye to a lot of my friends who are either staying here or moving to other countries themselves. I grew up with most of these people, so it is rather difficult knowing I won't be seeing them again in September, like I usually do *long exhale*. And, probably the most saddening part for me, saying goodbye to my cat. We've had her since I was 4, so she's pretty much my sister. Let's take a moment to appreciate our life as sisters.

Here we are cuddling.

Here she is being a potato.

Here she is reading about Stalin's economic policies.

Here she is judging me as I work out on the floor.

Here she is being cute.

Here she is helping me pack.

And here.

And here.

I think by now you've realised I'm going to miss my cat quite an awful lot. But, on the bright side, in a little over a month I will be seeing this beauty. That I cannot wait for!

So, after going off topic for quite a bit there, I will talk about how I travel-proofed my jewellery. As wherever I end up living is going to be quite small, I will have limited space for storing my bits and pieces, so I wanted to keep all my things pretty organised in pouches and bags, making it easier to find everything on a daily basis without having to unpack it. In terms of jewellery, I got a bunch of little pouches, empty mint containers and tiny plastic bags. Once I've filled up all the little pouches and containers, I put them into a make-up bag. The trick to this is to get a structured bag, such as a box pouch. That way, you can easily organise your jewellery inside it, and you know it won't move around too much, and will be easier to browse through. Whilst organising my jewellery, I came up with a few ways to keep everything tangle-free and easy to find, and so I decided I would share my tips with you.

Tangle-proof necklaces.

I found this idea here, however when I tried to pull my necklaces through a straw, I found it to be quite difficult since a lot of them had wider clasps and ends. I tried looking for thicker straws, but I couldn't seem to find any, therefore I found another way to make this work.

You'll need your necklace, a straw and a pair of scissors.

Cut off the tip of the straw (you don't have to, but I did because it just annoyed me.)

Cut a straight(ish) line across the entire length of the straw.

Pull the clasp through the cut in the straw, until you reach the end.

Clasp your necklace close.

Repeat to all smaller necklaces and store them in a small pencil case or similar pouch. You can also use this method to organise tangle-prone bracelets and anklets.

Organised ear studs.

Inspired by this tutorial, I decided to stick to card tags, as they are a little more lightweight than wooden ones.

You will need a bunch of card tags, some sort of needle to punch holes through the tags and some binder rings. You might also want to grab a pen (if you feel you need to mark where to pierce the tags) and a pin cushion to lay the tags on whilst piercing them.

Draw on and pierce the holes. The best way to do this is to space them apart custom to each individual pair of ear studs. If the studs are smaller, the holes can be closer to each other, and if the studs are larger, the holes need to be further apart. You can also place a few pairs of ear studs on the tags if the ear studs came in a set.

Once you have all your ear studs attached to the tags, you can split them into groups, depending on how you want to attach them to the binder rings. 

And go ahead and attach your earring tags onto the binder rings.

Organised rings.

Here is a pile of rings, which is quite messy. It's difficult trying to find the ring you want, and you're more likely to lose smaller rings.

Here are your new best friends who will help you organise your rings, make them easier to browse through and make you less prone to losing rings.

You can either use a binder ring, like the ones used for the ear studs, or one of those key-chain rings.

Divide your rings however you want (or if you have a larger key/binder ring or a smaller amount of rings you can probably get away with using just one key/binder ring).

Attach all of your rings onto the key and/or binder rings and here you have it. Easy to browse through, you don't have to take all the rings off to pick out the one you want, and it's easy to organise them by colour.

The rest of the jewellery is quite simple to organise, and hence I didn't bother taking photographs of them. Any jewellery pieces that don't get tangled are in little pouches, divided into broaches, pendants, toe rings, bracelets, big necklaces etc. Any jewellery pieces that are likely to get tangled up or damaged by other jewellery items are put into little plastic bags and then put into the little pouches. Any delicate pieces that are likely to snap are stored in empty mint containers. Bangles are just thrown in loose. And that's it. My (rather big) jewellery collection is contained within a rather small bag, and trying to find any jewellery is not an issue since everything is in separate little pouches, each one different. I've been trying to organise my jewellery like this for a while now, and I'm glad I did because this way I know I won't need to invest in any jewellery storage in the limited living space I will have, which would just take up space and get dusty and would just be a hassle. If I come up with an extraordinarily convenient way to organise my make-up, I will definitely post that as well, however so far it's still quite chaotic!