The Motherlode of Bling

Apparently, there are women who walk among us who own a lot of jewelry. I am not one of these women - I tend to take a liking to one item at a time and then wear it every day for a few months, until I forget to one day, and then I forget for pretty much ever. I have a little tray on my dresser which holds the few things I keep in regular rotation, and it takes up less than a square foot of my space.

So you can imagine my surprise when I peeked into the innocent-looking bag given to Evie last weekend by her Auntie Ani, which she described as 'just some old jewelry'. Inside was a literal shit-ton of gold and silver and sparkles and animal prints and, *gasp*, and...I can't go on. "Whoa,"was my first reaction.

I let the bag sit on the kitchen table for a day until, during our bedtime ritual, Evie interrupted to ask if I could get something out of the bag for her. "Mama can you find this necklace I saw - it has a plus sign on it, but one side is like, longer?"

"You mean a cross?"

"Yeah yeah, a cross. And it has sparkles in it, like shiny clear...diamonds? Can you find it so I can wear it to school tomorrow?"

"Sure thing sweetie." Oh, what a naive fool I am.

I went downstairs, peered into the bag, and saw an intimidating mass of tangled chains, enormous earrings, dozens upon dozens of bracelets, countless rings and a random pair of sunglasses. After a few minutes of digging around I found the cross. I set to the big task of untangling it - and that is where I spent every spare moment I had over the next several days.

The fruit of my labor

You see, untangling things is my specialty (read: I'm a little OCD about it), and once focused on the project of doing so, I must finish. A quick look at the above photo might give you an idea of the tangle-potential of the jewelry in that bag. And that's not even all of it - side note: if anyone gets a gift of jewelry from the teenager any time soon, you'll know where it came from. 

I decided that this was far too much jewelry for an 8-year-old without pierced ears, and I would have to find a way to carefully organize it all so that it didn't get retangled before she got a chance to enjoy it, so given is she to throwing stuff into maddeningly random piles around her room.

Can you guess which pair I'll be trying to rock soon?

Of course, there were things I knew she'd want to utilize in her wardrobe stylings immediately:

OMG Gold Bow Bracelet - adorbs.

Notice how nicely NOT tangled these are...

After stacking the bajillions of bangles, I was finally finished:

Now for the daunting problem of figuring out how to organize all of this stuff so that we can have our kitchen table back. Women with masses of jewelry, what are your secrets?! I have a feeling that Pinterest is going to be my best friend today...which is awesome because we all know how much I love a DIY craft project!

In the meantime, I have some accessorizing to play around with:

I think it works

But seriously - please leave any tips, suggestions, ideas on organizing all of this shizz in the comments below. Thanks!