Organizing Jewelry, Charms, and Valuables

Over the past four years, I have posted many times on how and why I buy jewelry. I have also posted on making charm bracelets and other jewelry. However, I have never posted about how I store the jewelry that I purchase and why. So, with this post, I will share that information and also add links to some of the other posts on this subject. I am not linking to them all as there are many posts on great deals I have found on jewelry or silver items and if you want to read more about why I purchase those and how I find those, you can do a search on silverware, or jewelry at the bottom of the page and those posts will come up. 

 

I have made charm bracelets for the girls for years. I collected charms on vacations and my mother collected them from all over the world. I shared in a few posts about how we acquire our charms for cheap and how we make some of our own. Here is a link to part 1 about our charm bracelets. Here is a link to part 2 about the charm bracelets. 

I have never had a good storage system for our charms and used to keep them in an old baby wipes container and some of the other items in a black bag. Over the years, as the girls got older, I stopped giving charms out as they outgrew wanting them. The younger girls have missed out on so many things as I figure they remember when we did things with their sisters. 
 
The other day we had a nice dinner and they had to ask me about setting the table and folding napkins. We used to have company for dinner every week on Sunday but being so busy and not as many people at home, we haven't done that in a few years. I guess the older girls used to set the tables and the younger one's helped in other ways as they reminded me they didn't know how to set a "fine" table. It is just how things go as some have left the nest and our lives have shifted. 

For years as we would make jewelry with Princess number one, we used a tackle box to store the findings and beads.Here is a link to how we store our jewelry making items.


I have stored my gold and silver jewelry in plastic craft thread holders for years. When I get a piece of jewelry that we won't wear often, storing it off site is the best option. If the item is something we wear, we will keep it in our jewelry box. 

However, much of the jewelry I purchase for "emergency preparedness" isn't something I want to wear. I have a container of broken silver pieces and one of broken gold pieces that I will refine down when I have enough acquired. 

The items we won't be wearing, I put into size appropriate bags that can be purchased in the "jewelry making" section of Walmart. They have three sizes. They are $1 for 100 bags and are wonderful for storing all sizes and shapes of jewelry. 

Storing them in airtight baggies keeps the items from getting tarnished and tangled. At first, I had several items in a section or a bag and many times they would get tangled. This way the item can be seen clearly in the bag but doesn't get tangled or tarnished and is kept together with its identification papers. If you have something appraised for insurance purposes, make sure you put a copy of that in the bag or section before you put it in the safety deposit box, that way if anything happens to your home, the items documents are with the item at the bank. This would save you a headache of getting it appraised again if you had a house fire or some other tragedy.

Here is a link to one of my posts about why I buy jewelry and how. I put the item I have purchased into the size bag that it fits and then I put a little note into the bag stating the date purchased, where it was purchased and how much I paid. 

If I didn't purchase the item, say it was given to me at some point or was inherited, I put a note about the person who gave us the item, where they got it and any history associated with the item. I have several rings that were gifts over the years so I put those in with the story of how I got it and keep family heirlooms in a different compartment.
 
Here is an updated post on how I purchase it and where. I put all the similar jewelry in the same box and compartments. For example, the top picture is gold items, diamonds, and pearls. The next one is silver items and the third box and picture is larger pieces of jewelry or items I may not be sure of the value. 

When I get an item, I document if it is gold and which type. It can be very hard to read the small writing on gold items so once I can see it clearly, I don't want to have to figure it out again so I put if it is 10, 12, or 14 karat gold right on the label for the bag. I have put them into compartments by purity in the past but now I put rings together, bracelets, earrings, diamonds and necklaces all into sections so that if one of the girls wants a gold ring, they can just look at that compartment.
 
For Princess Three's graduation, I collected the jewelry and took it to graduation where I allowed her to take anything she wanted out of the bins other than the diamonds (as each girl will get one of those some day) and a gold heart necklace I purchased the week Grand-princess was born that I labeled so I can give it to her when she is 16. 

I meant to take a picture of Princess Three with her gold necklace and earring set she chose but forgot in all the business of the day. I could have picked something for her but the girls always surprise me at what they pick. I would NEVER have picked out the multicolored rose gold necklace and earrings that had little roses in multicolored gold and rose gold for the rest for Princess Three. I thought she would take something silver or white gold for sure as that is what she usually wears. 

The charms have always been a mess but I decided to take it on this week and purchased this Tupperware container full of sewing items at a second hand store a few weeks ago. I thought about using the thread holders but since I needed a place for chains, bracelets that are already made etc, I figured the Tupperware would be a better fit. 

All the messy piles of items in this post all fit into the orange Tupperware easily and well making it much easier for me to find the charms I am looking for easily.

I sorted them by category such as "sports," "religion," "animals," "travel" etc. The different bag sizes made it very easy to put the charms together that way and I had a few misc. bags as well but it is so much easier to find the charms now that Princess four and Five are wearing them and interested in them. 

Princess Five wants to have each of her best friends over one day and to make them each a charm bracelet with the things they enjoy on them. 

We have enough of them to make that work out just fine. I think it will be a memorable day for her friends and a fun day for her as well.

As you can see by the pictures, the charms and chains are much more organized and all in one spot and by category. This way of storing things has been very handy and I am glad I have the charms as organized as well now. .