Today’s Hint: 6 Budget-Friendly Ways to Organize Hair Accessories

Note from Hint Mama: My daughter’s hair accessories are a mess. Her little barrettes, hair ties and headbands are basically piled together on a high shelf in her closest, and figuring out an easy way to organize them better has been on my to-do list for months now. So for help, I turned to Crystal Sabalaske, a mom and professional organizer. As a new contributor to Hint Mama, Crystal, will be sharing organizing hints from the perspective of a mom of a 9-year-old daughter and a 7-year-old son. Here’s her first hint.

I remember the days when I was 10 years old, had waist-length hair and organized all of my hair accessories in my Caboodles.  I put all the barrettes on the first shelf, rubber bands on the second and scrunchies (you remember those, don’t you?) on the very bottom. I may even have had a few banana clips in there.

Things have surely changed though. It seems that there are so many more little girl hair accessory options available now. Over the years, my 9-year-old daughter has become a collector of dozens of hair accessories, and we wouldn’t be able to fit even a portion of her extensive hair paraphernalia collection in my measly Caboodles.

Maybe I’m partly to blame, as my daughter wasn’t the one who picked out coordinating barrettes for her baby outfits. But my daughter is now at the age when matching her accessories and looking “fashionable” are becoming important to her.So, as untangling a knot of hair accessories can be frustrating, I’ve had to find ways to cope with – and organize — her abundance of hair clips and bands. Today’s hint covers six of my favorite budget-friendly organization strategies, and hopefully they’ll help prevent you from wanting to pull your hair out due to hair-accessory related frustration.

But before I get to the strategies, let me share one important hair accessory organization tip: The key to organizing hair supplies is to keep like items together.  Mixing rubber bands, hair clips and headbands will only lead to chaos, or at least will make finding the exact accessory you need unnecessarily difficult. Who needs more frustration when you’re probably already struggling enough just to get the knots out of your kid’s hair? Okay, now onto the organization methods.

1. Turn an empty toilet paper roll into a hair-tie organizer. Slide rubber bands right over the roll. And to make the roll pretty, cover it (using Modge Podge, for instance) with wrapping paper that matches the décor of your daughter’s room.

2. Clip hair ties together with a carabiner. With this trick, it’s easy to get one rubber band off without removing the rest.  My daughter is a swimmer and puts her hair up before she puts on her swim cap.  But we don’t need to worry about forgetting to bring a rubber band to the pool – we keep a few spares on a carabiner clipped onto her swim bag.

3. Use an oatmeal container, or any other round canister, for headband & hair-clip storage.  Slide headbands onto the container for easy access, and store hair clips inside the container. And like with the toilet paper roll, you can update the oatmeal container’s look with wrapping paper.

4. Use an inexpensive decorative bin or basket for headband storage. We bought the basket you see pictured for less than $10 at HomeGoods. Just make sure that the basket or bin you use can fit headbands lined up next to each other, so you can easily see the bands’ various colors and patterns.

5. Turn a small drawer organizer into a barrette and clip organizer. Put the organizer (like this one from The Container Store) into a drawer and sort small barrettes and clips separately into the organizer’s little compartments.

6. Use a craft box for barrettes and clips. If you don’t have any extra drawer space, a small ArtBin craft box can store barrettes and clips just as well as a drawer organizer.

To be sure, these aren’t the only hair accessory organization ideas out there. Just as the types of hair accessory options are expanding, so too are the methods for storing them. I discovered some other great suggestions on the Bed Bath & Beyond Blog. My favorite: using a ring holder to store hair rubber bands.

And of course, there are many fancier hair accessory organization methods you can consider if money isn’t an option. For instance, I love organizing products that make use of vertical wall space like this tutu hair bow organizer my daughter received as a gift. And, assuming you have room to hang an organizing product on a closet rod or towel bar, the pocket organizer featured on the Intrepid Murmurings Blog looks like it holds everything a little girl needs to add some style to her hair.

Finally, I have a confession. As you can see, I still have my Caboodles.  Although now we use it to store Barbie clothes.

What are your tips for organizing hair accessories? Do you think moms should limit the number of hair accessories a child has? Why or why not? Share your thoughts below.

Crystal Sabalaske, professional organizer and owner of Cluttershrink, has been helping people get organized in their homes and offices for the past 12 years. She has appeared on several episodes of HGTV’s series, Mission: Organization, and her organizing tips have appeared in national publications such as Family Fun, Parents, and Women’s Health magazines. Crystal lives in Bucks County, PA, with her 9 year-old daughter and 7-year-old son. Follow her tips on Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter. 

Photo credit: Crystal Sabalaske

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