I promise y’all, I’m not a product junkie. If I didn’t blog about natural hair as a way to encourage and motivate men and women to accept their kinky hair just as it is, I would probably be one of those hotep like naturals who only use shea butter, coconut oil, and boil some grass to use as shampoo. Alas, blogging and living in NYC means that I go to a number of hair events that compete with one another for the biggest, baddest swag bag possible, and sometimes get sent products by PR companies to test out. Now, I’m NOT complaining about all the free stuff I get… but I do know the struggle of trying to find a place in your 400 square feet studio for an additional 3 bottles of leave-in conditioner. Here are some ideas for how to organize and store natural hair products, whether you have just a few staples or a whole closet full.

Just the Basics

If you’re disciplined enough to own just a few natural hair products, your best bet is to store them inside the shower with you. Whether you choose to use one full caddy or several separate suction containers – one holding your shampoos, conditioners and treatments, and another holding your leave-ins and styles – having your hair products easily accessible during wash day will shave off a few seconds (I wish I could promise minutes or even hours) off the process. The second best in-bathroom option after the shower is inside a vanity mirror or below the sink.

If you happen to share a bathroom, or you simply want to store your products outside of the bathroom, take a look at desk organizers with separate drawers that you can use to separate products out by function, like this wire desk organizer.

I Have a Few Fave Brands

If you’ve got a few of each kind of product and can’t put them in the bathroom, you’ll need some storage bins or baskets that you can either place on the floor, in the corner of your room, underneath your vanity, or in your closet. While square and cloth storage bins are easy to find, fun to color coordinate, and relatively cheap, you’ll want wire or wicker baskets just in case one of your products, well, has a little accident. There’s nothing worse than drying to clean off an oil based twist custard from your beloved purple storage bin. Trust me, it AINT fun. If you do decide to be daring, or just like the look like I do, be sure to line the bottoms of your storage bins with paper towels or even an old washcloth to protect against any potential spills.

H&M’s home collection has an assortment of cute and affordable wire baskets that you can place either on the floor of your bathroom or in a bookcase. This one is on sale for just $13 and can hold a good number of products in a corner of your bathroom or another part of the house! Target also has this fantastic wood basket with a chalkboard label so you’ll never have to dig through a basket of gels looking for a prepoo!

I Have All 15 Shea Moisture Lines

If you have a TON of haircare products, your best bet is to dedicate an entire section of your vanity, storage closet, or shelving space to it. While I’ve chosen to use boxes combined with open display of products in my setup (in the video below), you could just line up all of your hair products side by side so you can have easy access to them whenever you need them. It may also be a good idea to get under the bed storage bins to hold your stash, allowing you to bring out 5 or so products at any given time, and store the rest until a later date.

If you really just need to dedicate a whole section of  your room for products, it’s best to get a storage bookcase to hold them. Target has an affordable assortment of bookcases and shelves that would be perfect for your product stash! Since I have tons and tons of products, I choose to store them in an Ikea bookcase that I got secondhand off Craigslist, keeping brands where I have most of the products together, and placing mismatched products in pretty cloth storage bins lined with toilet paper. Check out my organization skills below:

So those are my tips for organizing and storing your natural hair products. Needless to say this is pretty darn good advice (if I do say so myself) for storing any beauty products or toiletries, so feel free to apply them to whatever you have laying about!

Here’s a roundup of my favorite storage solutions for natural hair products, from Target, H&M, and the Container Store!

How do you store your natural hair products?