“Owning less is better than organizing more”

Now you have all your wanted items after decluttering your bathroom. We have collected the bathroom-related products from all the storage spaces in your home, and these are categorized. This gives us an overview of the categories and number of items. It’s time to organize your bathroom in a way that works for you! Everything will have its permanent place to live.

All the storage spaces are empty now, so you have a good idea of how much space you actually have. It could be that after decluttering, you don’t need all those spaces anymore. Maybe, you don’t have enough stuff anymore to go in all that storage space. And that is great! If one of those storage spaces is an extra furniture piece, you can think of selling it! Read more about what to do with unwanted items.

The products you use most should be easiest to reach

Storing and organizing your bathroom
Now it’s time to store and organize your products, to maintain a clutter-free bathroom.
The products you use most should be easiest to reach. All your skincare should live together, as should your dental care, your medicine, and your shower products. Your shower gel and shampoo want to live in the shower. Try to avoid having products on the edge of your sink or bathtub. Make sure that it’s easy to keep your bathroom clean. You can either buy a rack for your shower products that you can hang on the wall (not on the floor) or add these products to the cabinet so they can be taken out easily every time you take a shower.

Often, there will be a mirrored cabinet above the sink. This is a perfect combination of storage and function. All skincare, hair products, perfume, make-up, dental care, and medicine are kept in that cabinet. This is an ideal scenario for most people, which will keep the counter clear and your daily products within easy reach. If you’ve got multiple doors in the mirror, consider where the best light comes from and use the opposite side for make-up and skincare storage. This results in keeping the side with the good lighting closed and still able to access your products.  

Bathroom challenges
When I recently moved in with my partner, we faced some bathroom challenges. It doesn’t have much storage space even though the bathroom is quite spacious. This is not ideal for daily usage, so we needed a plan. There’s quite a deep cabinet beneath the sink and not so much space around the sink. This is maybe something you’ve dealt with in the past or are dealing with currently – having to bend down to pull out bottles, tubes, etc. Having to reach behind stuff to grab what you need, items falling over, having to reach to the back… Clearly, this bathroom was not designed by a woman. Since re-building the space is generally not feasible, we have to come up with a solution to make it work. 

Baskets to the rescue
My initial idea centered on using a series of baskets. There was a bit of counter space around the sink, but not much…  We took measurements of the cabinet and space around the sink, so that each basket would have a permanent place under the sink, but that it could also fit easily next to the sink and give us easy access to everything we use on a daily basis without having to dig around and pull out individual items.

Categories
Next, we identified the categories and use;

• Products I use on a daily basis, like facial toner, moisturizer, deodorant, and perfume
• Make-up
• Haircare
• Storage for my blow dryer and hair straightener
• Shaving items for my partner
• His daily care (beard oil, moisturizer, comb)
• Toothbrushes
• Our back-up products

Puzzle
Essentially, each category became its own basket. We puzzled different sized baskets on the floor of the shop (Muji), to fit the dimensions of the cabinet and space next to the sink. And we made it work! Even though I still prefer having a cabinet at eye level or a drawer under the sink, we were able to find a solution that gave everything a permanent home in the bathroom and still allows for easy access to daily-use items.

Once you work out the puzzle of your own bathroom, consider the order in which you use items each day. Do you go deodorant first, followed by facial toner, moisturizer, and then eye cream? Organize accordingly. This is almost a guaranteed success to keep your bathroom nice and tidy.

You use your towels every day. Make sure you love using these towels

Towels
Towels are best kept in an area where there is the least amount of moisture. Ideally, towels live in the bathroom. If that’s not possible due to storage space or the amount of moisture, then any other place will do, as long as they have a permanent place to live. 

Structures
You use your towels every day, and we should make sure you love using these towels; the texture, the smell, and the colors. There’s a whole range in towel-world available. I will share a couple of those characteristics. 

Some towels have a waffle structure – which is quite puffy, yet clean texture. It dries easily and doesn’t take up much space. Then there is the traditional tiny loop plush kind. These are available in several thicknesses, and generally, we think the thicker ones feel more luxurious. Then there are also linen towels available – these dry fast but have little body. It’s very Japanese and can have a ‘poor’ handfeel as it’s very light. 

Think of an amazing towel experience (we all know you had at least one). Why did you love this towel so much? Was it the thickness, heaviness, color, or size? Think about the towel situation in your home now. Do you love using these? What is there to improve?

Mismatches
Mismatches in towels are a no-go – towels in different sizes and in all colors of the rainbow will create a distraction. When you have a theme going on with different prints – that’s ok. But if you have created a collection over the years in different sizes, qualities, and colors – it’s time to update and go for one brand. Maybe you don’t have the budget to update now, but it could be a good birthday or Christmas present.

When I moved out, I created a towel collection of two different sizes and in different shades of brown. These towels were collected over time and were purchased from a rather cheap store. All the towels had different structures – some were thick and quite harsh, others very thin and floppy. I had my favorites among those and always pulled those out of the bunch. But I didn’t like the size of either of those and I didn’t enjoy the color anymore. It was time to update and I had my eye on thick, big white towels. They were just a bit over my budget and I asked it as a birthday present. It might not be something you think of asking for a present, but if it gives you the towels you love – what is holding you back?
It will make a huge difference in your daily experience, I promise.

Washing
Another important note: ALWAYS wash your towels before you use them, without any fabric softener. This results in nice fluffy towels that will be absorbent, rather than pushing the moisture around. Also, think about the number of towels you actually need. How often do you change and wash your towels? I can easily get around with 3 towels per head. Usually, I do laundry one time a week. This means I can potentially use 2 towels a week before it goes into the washing machine. A third one can be used during the time of washing and drying.

Don’t keep too much stock of your skincare due to the expiration date

Stock items
When you have a stock of items, make sure you keep those together per category. When you have several shower gels, try to store those in a way where the products are behind each other. You can just grab the one in front. If there are items where the expiration date is soon, place those in front. But also, ask yourself why you need a lot of stock of that item. Try to live up to having the amount of stock that is right for the number of people in the house and the amount of use… not to prepare for the apocalypse. 

When you’re a couple and you travel quite regularly, you actually do not need to have six giant containers of body wash in stock, as opposed to a family of four that might move through stuff quicker. 

Backups and stock
Another thing to keep in mind is to not keep too much stock of your skincare due to the expiration date. I will talk about that more in detail in another blog post; in the previous blog post, I  talk about the limited time that a sample product is of good quality. Be careful with what you put on your skin; it’s your largest organ!

Generally, I’d like to keep one backup item for the following categories:

• Shower gel
• Shampoo
• Toothpaste
• Razor blades
• Hair product
• Deodorant
• Hand wash
• Dental floss

Try not to over-decorate the room

Visions & Styling
Now we’ve come to the finishing touch. Your products are decluttered, organized, and stored in a way that makes sense and is easy to use. Maybe this is enough for you, and that is great! But possibly you want to add a little bit extra to your bathroom, to give it a certain character. Maybe you collected some pictures of a jungle bathroom, for example.

Shower curtain
A shower curtain is the easiest way to change the outlook of your bathroom. You can choose a white one for a minimal and clean character, or choose one with a print of palm trees for your jungle bathroom. You can add some scented candles, incense holders and sticks, crystals, some dried flowers, or maybe even an actual plant. Try not to over-decorate the room with things, as it will be less easy to clean and therefore more likely to feel cluttered again. 

Products
There might be some products that you want to show. When your bath salts are in plastic bags or containers with a loud font, try to replace them with a nice container so it’s pleasant to look at and appealing to use. It could be attractive to store and show your loved items in ceramics. In our home, cotton buds are stored in a ceramic pot with a face on it, and I have a ceramic hand where the jewelry lives that I’ve been wearing that day.

Finally…
Now I’m sure you are all wondering how the organizing of my parents’ bathroom ended. I took out all the items, as we did in the previous post, and organized them per category in easy-to-reach spaces. When my parents came back from holiday, I showed them how much they have accumulated. I didn’t throw away anything, because that is not up to me to do so (except for things past the expiration date).

Because things were stored around the house, they had no idea of how many of the same they actually had. We went through all the categories and items together and we got rid of so much stuff!

Luckily, my parents were happy with this process and they kept up with this way of putting stuff away and also stopped buying excess things in bulk and on sale.

Next in line for decluttering: Your kitchen.

What is your biggest vision for your bathroom?

Thank you for reading.
We’re in this together.
~