I’m very excited to be kicking off the first week of my Organizing in Small Spaces Series! Before I dive into our topic today — How To Organize Your Bathroom ~ Personal Care Products — I wanted to give a brief word of wisdom. This series is designed for the busy mom who has most of her life somewhat under control but could use a better system to help her find things easily. If you feel that you are so overwhelmed that you don’t even know where to begin I’d recommend a few different things. First you might look into having a professional organizer come work with you. Just like you’d have a professional carpet cleaner come to your house if your carpets were soiled and stained, having a organizer help you know where to begin can really help! I’ve been delighted to hear several come and speak at different MOPs groups and I always come away with new great ideas! If you don’t have the money or don’t feel quite like you need that level I’ve taken several of FlyLady’s ideas and tweaked them to fit my life and I’d highly recommend buying her book Sink Reflections
! (you can also sign up/find things on her website, but I’ve found it to be a bit overwhelming at times)
Ok, with that being said let’s dive in!
I feel like the bathroom is a great place to start because if you’re like me you have a BUNCH of things in there that need to be organized and unlike clutter you won’t really need/want to get rid of them. Our family of 4 seems to have each person needing a different kind of soap and shampoo for various reasons–add to that the fact that I love to get body products as gifts, and the fact that we both like having a stockpile–well, we always have a lot of personal care products!
One great thing about living in a small apartment or condo is that you most likely have a nice sized bathroom (if you’re living in a small, older house this sadly won’t be the case!) If you do, however, be sure to take advantage of that space by using it wisely!
The First Place to Start is the tub/shower – you should only have out one of each type of item (one shampoo, one conditioner, one soap/bodysoap) If like us different people have different skin needs make sure to just have one thing per person, and see if you can’t streamline by having certain people start to share (for example Amber and Tyler both use the Mommy Bliss body wash) You can see for us that I also have Bubble Bath along the ledge, and a foot scrubby item (like I said–I love my body stuff!!!!)
The next obvious place is on top of the toilet – Especially if you’re in a small bathroom this is “real estate” you’ll want to take advantage of–but in such a way that it doesn’t look trashy! I take care of this by using a pretty basket to hold the lotion & Amber’s eczema medicine since I use it several times daily, along with our Glade Expressions Spray (which, by the way) is pretty awesome–for some reason I’m really into lavender scents lately!!
Our bathroom here doesn’t have a fan (boo to that) so to pull “double duty” against odors next to the basket I also have a Glade Expressions Oil Diffuser. It’s a pretty way to make the bathroom smell as great as it looks!
Now it’s time for all the “hidden away” spots-one that most bathrooms are guaranteed to have is under the sink – For ours we have it split into “my side” and “hubbies side” I keep one of each of the personal care items that I’m going to be using daily (hairspray, facewash, makeup remover, contact solution) and my “makeup tacklebox” which is where I store all of my makeup on my side. On hubbies he actually has most of his “stockpile” of personal care items so that way he doesn’t have to go digging through all of my and the kids things in the drawers since he uses fewer products than the rest of us.
Lastly it’s the drawers! The bathroom we’re using now has several nice, deep drawers to use. In the top one I keep all of the kiddos products and my toothpaste and various other products that aren’t under the sink. (hubby has a long skinny drawer that he keeps the rest of his items in)
In the very bottom deep drawer is where I keep our stockpile of “extras” of anything that we have. I also keep all my extras in the very top of our cabinet (see the top photo for those) As you can see I’m pretty well stocked up! Which brings us to the question–how much is too much? During her talk with us last week Miss Pary Moppins addressed this and I loved her logic. She said that in her family they use the “Rule of Twelve”. That means that for any item like shampoo or body wash you figure you might go through about one a month, if you have twelve you are provided for for a year–which is an ample amount. Anything above this you can stop buying items or donate ones that you get to worthy places ( Pregnancy Crisis Centers, Single Mom Pantries, or Homeless Reach Out Organizations are just a few ideas!)
Do you have any great bathroom organization tips that I missed? Please let me know in the comments!
Nicole Elliott
