Storing & Organising Your Perfumes

I need to come up with a system, actually. Many of my perfume are stored in an armoire; others are in various chest of drawers. I also have many on bookshelves, but I tend to only put opaque bottles out on display like that.

Yes, I could really use a good system, as I sometimes cannot locate a perfume that I really want to wear!

Sorry to say that the "grouping" in my armoire is completely arbitrary. Fortunately, I have a good visual memory, so I can usually locate a classic by following my vague feeling of approximately where it is. But outside the armoire (which holds my oldest perfumes), it's anyone's guess where my newer acquistions may be hiding!

I have an antique sort of standing desk with a wooden lid to close everything. It's a chaotic system. I often rearrange things on a 'I need new space' basis. I like opening the wooden lid and see all my 'lovelies' crowded in front of me. I have boxes in the basement for back-ups and so forth.

I can manage my ~200 perfumes, but I do have problems with my samples. I put them into those little bags that you get when you order them at First-In-Fragrance, and I stuffed little file cards into them as well, so I do have an alphabetical order by brand.

But I will have to take the time to refine my system. Especially for "M" there are lots of brands, I will have to be more detailled.

I find that the wall mounted cabinet I store my fragrances in is a perfect solution. It is only 4.5 inches deep. The shallow depth allows me to display fragrances, two deep at times, but I can see them all. I tend to colorize them (organize by bottle color and or style) which makes for a nice presentation. I find that my rotation habits are better if I don't cluster fragrances by maker.

I, too, find that it's hard to keep track of the samples. In fact, this year I'm on an austerity campaign motivated in part by my sense that I need to go ahead and test all of the samples already in my possession--before they evaporate!

Some vials are great and seem as though they are so airtight that they could preserve the contents forever. Others, however, are obviously not, and the worst for me are the decant atomizers which are often leaky, in my experience.

I've seen some fragrance enthusiasts use bullet cartridge cases to organize their sample.

I have most of my samples in test tube racks, stored in alphabetical order in small drawers. The bottles I have in rotation I have on top of a bureau, the other one I keep in their boxes on a shelf in my "boudoir". Decants I keep in different wooden boxes with small glasses to make them stand up.

Still I manage to have samples all over the place! I never seem to get them organized in the phase they´re coming.

And what to do with all the boxes??? I love keeping them, cause when I re organize my collection I want to store the fragrances in their boxes and if i swap or sell the perfume is worth more if the box is still in good shape, but I don´t know what to do with them meanwhile? How do you do with the boxes?

Currently I store my perfumes in my wardrobe but with the effect that I need to stack some onto each other. Not so good. I will buy a kitchen closet which would suit my purpose nicely.

I have ceased accumulating large amounts of samples, I only hold 5-6 minisprays but give/throw away those I do not need....oh, that reminds me of something

OCD? Color + size coordinate? Did Somebody call my name? LOL



I did keep my samples upright in a shoebox lit filled with that green flower piece stuff (oasis), but at one point the shoe lits became to much.(I had 3, over 400 samples)

So then I bought plastic boxes with compartments that I can make bigger and smaller: (and did a big give-away of unloved samples)
Bottom shelf: (and yes: to the right is the collection of my son 5yo hihi)
I have 5 of those plastic containers: 2 with samples to keep, 1 with "maybe's" and 2 with samples that can go
The basket is full with samples that just came in and need to be tested.

All need and tidy

Beautiful! You should work as a perfume management consultant!

Boxes:
For bottles that I do not want to keep: if I have a box I will keep it.
For bottle I want to keep I toss the boxes.
I kept them for the longest time but got irritated by the mess and that I do not use the boxes. (to much trouble getting them in and out, they rip and/or get ugly) So out they went...

Organization comes from taking just 1 more second to plan (ahead) so you do not end up needing a whole lot of time cleaning it up

A friend of mine from the German Parfumo stores his perfumes in a wine refridgerator. Of course, this is the perfect way since you can keep a constant temperature of 12° C!

Today, I had a look at some wine refridgerators. For a collection of 200+ perfumes you would have to spend about 800 €. And you cannot use it as it comes. They all have a glass front which you will have to cover. The shelves in it are all ribbed in order to hold the wine bottles. You would have to replace them with plain boards.

Well, let's see...

On other fora there was / is much debate on the wine coolers.

My personal opinion is that the fumes "turn" much quicker due to the swift temperature changes by taking them out and putting them back in.
A perfumer from Ormonde Jayne told me that without direct sunlight a warm room is not bad when the temperatures do not swing but gradually change during the seasons. ( I asked if a room temp. about 28 degrees Celsius / 82 F. was to hot as that is what my room is in a heatwave: she said: no problem)

This is very interesting. So the "shock" of a swift change in temperature is worse than the higher ambient temperature? Fascinating.

I have a wine cooler, btw, but it's filled with wine, and I'm not sure how it would work for perfume. The shelves have long narrow slots obviously intended for the shape of wine bottles.

I have thought about buying a large fridge but the same problem would arise there: inappropriately sized spaces. Plus knowing what you said about radical changes in temperature....

I think that I'll stick with my current method (= leave it to fate), though I am tempted to stow all of my solid perfumes into the produce drawer of my fridge and not touch them over the summer at all.

The only fragrances I keep in a wine cooler are flacons. The wire shelves can easily be replace by having glass shelves cut to size.

I don't really have a "system". I got about 40 full bottles. These are in one shelf of my wardrobe. I try to keep them assorted according the the perfume house. I think that is not so complicated. I easily know the bottles by their packaging and don't have to search.
And then I got maybe 30 decants, most of them in those small brown bottles. And that's a bit of a chaos.
I keep my samples in a box in different bags. One bag for the "ToDo + Resubmission", one for "tested and not liked" (which I try to get rid of) and "tested and good enough to use up". I got an additional small box with Todo's on my desk.

My system is:

CHAOS!