Ready to refresh your look for the upcoming season? For the biggest impact, start at the top, with your jewelry collection.
Organizing your jewelry is about more than tidying a drawer — it’s an opportunity to reconnect with your personal style and make intentional choices about what you keep, release, and pass on.
It’s a project I’d been avoiding for years. Organizing my jewelry box seemed like an overwhelming task, traveling back through decades, diving into a hornet’s nest of memorabilia. But it needed to happen because things had gone too far. Even finding a matched pair of earrings was too often an ordeal!
What I wanted was to feel anticipation and pleasure when I opened my jewelry drawer, not distress and anxiety! But I have been keeping these things for many years and I am attached to them or at least remember being attached and feel protective of them. Clearly, I needed a curating method that was considerate of my feelings about my pieces as well as producing an organized result. Once you have a thoughtful system, the task is much more manageable, and yes, even empowering.
Here are three lessons I learned that may help you organize your jewelry drawer and jewelry collection with more clarity and intention.
Realize: You’re not just organizing, you’re going deeper. You’re sorting out which of your pieces resonates with you now. That’s why it feels big. You’ll be clarifying for yourself what aligns with your current life. Sounds hard, right? But actually it is a relief; you’ll find this clarification is helpful to you in many ways.
For example, my personal style has been shifting toward minimalist jewelry, pieces featuring solid gold and silver and natural stones. I began noticing that’s what I prefer to wear now. So that clarification informs my choices about what I buy or make for myself. Now I prefer to buy fewer but better quality pieces (buy less/ buy better).
This means I have many still serviceable pieces are not quite right for me any longer. I find I am not wearing them. That means it is time to shift into a Steward role in relation to those pieces. It is time to remember that these pieces are resources with intrinsic value even if we no longer feel they are right for our own use. The opportunity in the Steward role is to recognize this continuing value and manage it with dignity. This means ensuring that the piece moves on properly to its next stage of life. There is a good use for that piece in the world, and that piece wants to serve.
This Steward stage can bring up feelings of uncertainty and guilt, along with discomfort about leave-taking. Know that there is a way to work through those emotions, one that will leave you feeling good about your decisions. And that is blessing of its own. This meditation can help: “Meditation for Seeking Clarity.” Find it in my article Lost in Your Jewelry Box?Ready to refresh your look for the upcoming season?
Not every piece needs to stay or go immediately—having a system for those in-process items can be a game changer. Here’s what I use:
“Keepsakes” box: Handy for storing items that you know you want to keep forever. They are now mementos so they no longer live in your jewelry box.
“Release” box: For collecting items that are ready to move to their next destination, a certain person or a charity, for example (keep reading for suggestions).
“Review in 6 Months” box: Good for those items awaiting more clarity.
Supplemental boxes as needed offer a practical way to manage indecision and allow time for reconsideration, while letting other pieces get on their way to brightening someone else’s life.
You’re not just organizing, you’re going deeper: sorting out which of your pieces resonates with you now. You’ll be aligning your collection with your current life. You’ll fine this clarification is helpful to you in many ways.
For example, my own style has been shifting toward artisan jewelry like the pieces I make: handmade pieces with solid gold and silver and natural stones. Now I prefer to buy fewer but better quality pieces (buy less/ buy better). And those are the pieces I prefer to wear now.
This means I have many still serviceable pieces are not quite right for me any longer. For them, I am stepping into a Steward role. When the time comes that you no longer wear a piece, your role as steward is to make sure that it moves on to its next stage of life. Someone out there needs that piece, and that piece wants to serve.
Uncertainty and guilt are your obstacles, along with discomfort about leave-taking. There is a way to work through those emotions that will leave you feeling good about your decisions, and that is blessing of its own. So helpful: my “Meditation for Seeking Clarity.” Find it in my article Lost in Your Jewelry Box?
Lesson 1: Organize Your Jewelry and Curate Your Style
Not every piece needs to stay or go immediately—having a system for those in-process items can be a game changer.
“Keepsakes” box: Handy for storing items that you know you want to keep forever. They are now mementos so they no longer live in your jewelry box.
“Release” box: For collecting items that are ready to move to their next destination, a certain person or a charity, for example (keep reading for suggestions).
“Review in 6 Months” box: Good for those items awaiting more clarity.
Supplemental boxes offer a practical way to manage indecision and allow time for reconsideration, while getting other pieces on their way to brightening someone else’s life.
Lesson 2: Jewelry Box Makeover with Backup Boxes
It is inevitable that some pieces will no longer fit your style or needs, but they can be treasures for someone else. You can make a big impact by donating those items to organizations that specifically need costume jewelry. (Stewardship of fine jewelry is a topic for another day.)
Here are two of my favorite organizations for jewelry donation. Both are 501(c) (3) organizations and so your donations are tax deductible:
- Dress for Success, where your jewelry can help support women and men in the job market to build professional wardrobes. I have personally donated to Dress for Success for over 25 years and have seen the incredible impact contributions can make.
- Chemocessories prepares accessory kits for women enduring treatment for breast cancer to ease the effects of hair loss and lift spirits. I know firsthand how meaningful this type of care can be from my own breast cancer treatment. A true kindness.
Image credit: Dress for Success. We can help: She needs a necklace!
Lesson 3: Your Jewelry’s Next Life Is In Your Hands. Where to Donate Jewelry?
The Full "Jewelry Declutter" Guide
Takeaway: jewelry is not “clutter!” Even when a piece no longer speaks to you, it can be very meaningful to someone else. Unworn jewelry simply needs to be moved along to an appropriate destination. You will have made someone else very grateful. And what remains will be your curated collection, a source of joy and inspiration every day.
Need more help? Head over to our step by step guide at ‘Lost In Your Jewelry Box?’