#75 - Scent Edit- Building a Sample Storage

Are you undecisive and have a lot of fragrance samples, or do you have a great friend who gifts you a lot of samples, or are you both?

I am both, so I have a very happy collection of fragrance samples. The problem is where to store them because they’re teeny vials. I wanted them to be accessible and I can put on top of surfaces so I will reach for them. So I’m going to share what I’ve done with my samples, involving some upcycling.

You’ll need:

box of your choice
Foam boards (https://amzn.to/3ObWelh)
Glue gun (https://amzn.to/3Yexo8V)
knife (https://amzn.to/3Yff7bN)
cutting mat (https://amzn.to/3YffkvB)
Pencil/pen for marking
ruler
paper

(links here are affiliate links)

I bought a Commodity exploration kit a while ago and did not throw it away since all my samples were still in there. It was a good size for me to start with.

I started by emptying everything out, including the foam where the samples lived. Then take out all my samples and order them in order of height and think about how many slots to fit them all in.

Next I used a piece of paper to measure out how it fits, cutting to size of how long it needs to be, and started cutting the foam board to fit. I then cut out several of these to fit along the box

Next, I start to order the samples around, looking a their size and see how they’d fit into the box. This helps determine how high I want it, how much space/lean I’d want for each tier

I ended up with halving the height of the shorter samples and because I only have these Commodity ones that are taller than the rest, they sit at the back with a taller wall to lean on. Once you’re happy with everything, mark where your boards need to sit and start to glue them down with a glue gun.

Naturally you can use other glue, but glue gun was a lot less messy for me.

And here we are, the finished storage, with room to spare. I put some of the really tall ones now into another box where I have my full sized bottles. This now sits on top of my Alex drawers and super easy to reach for when I’m getting ready.

You could totally buy storage. I considered it, but realised this is probably the best way to organise them for my habits. I already have glue gun and foam boards from when I created my make up drawer organisation so I didn’t have to actually purchase anything new to create this and upcycled my boxes that are really just too nice to throw away anyway.