Consolidate in the bathroom to save space
July 3, 2008 by Jennifer Chait
Filed under Home & Living
Coming up we’ll be taking a look at the sponsor of our current Anywhere Vault Giveaway; they’ve had a site re-design which is cool, and I’ll be weighing in with my experience using the service as well.
First though, I thought we’d kick off the day with some bathroom clutter solutions. This is one area where I have almost no issues. I have just one bathroom in my house, but % wise, it’s the biggest room in the house. Seriously, you could fit a full sized bed in there. We have a toilet and tub of course, and also a laundry area with double stacked shelving above, and a huge wide floor to ceiling storage closet behind the bathroom door.
Most people are not so lucky. The bathroom tends to be the smallest room in the house, and all those supplies don’t help. One great space saver is consolidation. In other words, get a bathroom / beauty / clean routine and stick to it. For example, if space is limited in your bathroom, you can save a lot by figuring out which products work for you, and sticking with them.
Find one hair care routine and stick to it. Oodles of shampoo bottles really just clutter the tub. 15 different facial care products only fill your drawers, and make it hard to find what you need. I’ve seen bathrooms so full of bottles, jars, make-up, and sprays that it boggles the mind. Are all those products really helping your beauty and health?
I do sometimes feel like fun care items (I like to make my own scrubs and other things) but I only make one new experiment at a time. Another perk of decluttering your personal care routine is that you’ll save time. If you continually follow the same care strategies, you’ll be in and out of that bathroom faster. Lastly, you’ll save money.
I’m not saying you shouldn’t keep some sparkles around for a special day, or buy some new soap on a whim; just so long as those whims are few and far between. You can further consolidate by combining product. You can use lotion with sunscreen to cut down on having both sunscreen and lotion. You can use washable washcloths instead of millions of cotton balls. You can even use shampoo as body wash. I found this one organic lavender shampoo and you can use it for tons of stuff – I once even tried washing clothes with it, and guess what, soap is soap is soap. If you have kids, they can use your shampoo. Special kid bath products are overrated; just be careful of their eyes.
What does your bathroom routine look like? Is it insane, and taking over the bathroom, or do you have control?
How cool, Jennifer – I’ve just posted on bathroom organising myself
http://organisingtips.blogspot.com/2008/07/tweaking-your-organising-systems.html
I use a combination moisturiser with sunscreen but there are probably a lot more things I could combine
Excellent tips that I can and will use! thanks! I plan to link to your site from my blog. Cant wait to see what other gems I can learn from here!
Ah, the bathroom is one of the worst for me. I’m a total lotion and potion junkie. I love the look of clean simple bathrooms, and aspire to have that someday myself. I’ve completely stopped acquiring anything bathroom-y (shampoo, soap, cosmetics, cleaners, etc). I suspect I’ll run out of toilet paper at some point so that’s the only think I’ll really need to replenish in the next little while. So at least I’m not accumulating more…but I do need to start sorting through the stuff I have. When I’m ready to tackle the bathroom, I’ll talk about it on my website. For now, I’m sticking to the stuff that’s a bit easier for me to ditch, like clothes and household items.
Thanks for all your great posts!
Anita
http://web.mac.com/synaptile/
My 5 yr old son’s autistic, the little bit of bathroom cupboards are easily accessible, so most of my not regularly used ‘bathroom’ stuff goes in one of my kitchen cupboards, which I have a lot of (husband had issues with this at first until I said: We do not need him getting into the prescription medicines! this makes sense! and anyway, your own parents have the medicines in the kitchen!). The stuff like tooth pastes, tooth brushes and shampoo, that gets used frequently, goes in a Rubbermaid container that’s difficult to open (unfortunately the 2.5 yr old CAN open it, so sometimes it’s still an issue) And my expensive smelly stuff (which I tend to have multiple bottles of one or two items that I got on clearance because I keep choosing fragrances that get discontinued, so just throwing ‘em in a box works as it’s not that hard to find ‘em) are in a train case that my 10 yr old can’t figure out how to open… I keep having to throw her and my husband’s reading materials in the magazine rack I put in there, though. I just need to stick one of my trusty grocery store bags in there for the laundry that often gets left there… and, well, um, mop it more regularly…