DIY Scrap Wood Makeup Drawer Organizer

Have you ever had that hallelujah moment when you open your makeup drawer for the first time after you organized it to find your compacts still neatly lined up so you can see them all, tubes still leaning just so in their places? And then you grab one thing and like a house of cards, somehow suddenly every single piece has fallen out of place and it’s completely impossible to find anything again?

I’ve had one too many of those moments, and yesterday, I cracked. I’ve never bought any makeup-specific organizers because they either never appealed to me or fit in the drawer all wrong or just generally wouldn’t function the way I wanted them to. So I got out my handy drill and I built myself a few DIY scrap wood makeup drawer organizers. If you have a drill, some bits, and some old wood laying around, you can do this!

Here’s my makeup drawer in disarray:

I just wanted to organize the pieces I use on a daily basis. I hunted around for some scraps of 2x4s and traced my most-used pieces onto them. Turns out it’s a good thing I’m a scrap-wood hoarder after all. 🙂

This project is so simple! I grabbed our set of Freud forstner bits and compared the holes to the bit sizes. I wound up using a combination of the 1-inch bit and the ¾-inch bit. You could also use paddle bits to do this, but for some reason I find forstner bits slightly easier to use. Anything that will drill a hole the right size for your makeup will work!

I knew I wanted to make the holes pretty deep so the makeup wouldn’t be too wobbly, so I clamped a piece of scrap wood (ha, ha) below the scrap I was drilling into, just in case I went through all the way by accident. Don’t want to drill into my workbench.

After I drilled a few holes, I marked a pencil with my fingernail to the depth I wanted and I used it as a gauge for each hole so that they would all be relatively the same depth. You can see the faint little horizontal nail marks. This is a very technical piece of equipment, people:

So after drilling, I whipped out a piece of sandpaper and smoothed down the edges and rough spots by hand. Took 5 minutes. And the result is this:

But I wasn’t going to stop there. Oh no, I couldn’t let this project end at just a half hour. Let’s not make this too easy, now. The baby was still asleep so I kept at it. I figured I may want this out on the counter now and again, so I put a coat of Minwax Red Chestnut stain on, followed by some spray poly.

So I really wish this was the part where I show you the final project pictures, but it’s not. I finished the first one for my most-used makeup and then I sort of got really, really carried away. Once I saw how nicely the makeup fit, suddenly all of my makeup needed to have its own little organized hole to live in. Enter more scrap wood. Seriously, this stuff has test Kreg jig holes in it. You can use anything! I drilled and drilled and drilled. Get your shop vac ready because this stuff gets everywhere.

Scrap wood with test kreg jig holes in it.

Lots of curly wood will go flying.

Are you ready for this? Look how much better organized this drawer is! And there is absolutely no risk of anything falling out of place!

If I’d been really planning, I think I would have measured and cut pieces to fit the depth of the drawer to make nice even rows, but I just needed a solution, and now.

And here is the final product for my makeup favorites:

I’m so obsessed. Here’s another shot.

Ready, set, go! Have fun creating this one!

Now, does anybody have any tips for how to drill slots for compacts to stay upright? Wait, I think I’m still obsessing … somebody cut me off!