Laura gave us some questions that she wanted to answer to evaluate what we did over the last 31 days so here it goes:
I decided to focus on our Master bedroom, Master bathroom and walk in closet. I chose to focus on our Master suite because it is the one space in the house that we've never done anything with! We've always been so focused on areas of the house that people see when they come over or areas that kids use that we always put ourselves last. Well, this time it was our turn!!
2. What steps did you take to ensure you completed the space within the 31 day timeline?
In order to complete the space in time I broke it down and figured out how much time each space would require. The bathroom which this post is about I figured I could knock out in less than a week, so I devoted the 2nd week of the challenge to the bathroom. I set aside an hour a few days a week to get in there and work hard, and then every day I would work for another 15-20 minutes to keep up the progress.
3. What was the hardest part of the challenge for you and how did you overcome it?
The hardest part of the bathroom was that we have almost zip places to store things! We have one sink, so we only have one cabinet. We also have a medicine cabinet. We brought in a couple of organizers for towels when we moved in (5 years ago) and a 4 drawer organizer to sit on the vanity, which became a catch all. Because we have less places to put things it really became a game of where can we shove this?? Chaos had definitely taken over!
4. What did you do with the “stuff” you were able to purge out of your newly organized space?
The garbage got a lot of stuff from the bathroom (like the 4 boxes of hair dye that I found! I don't dye my hair! And I've had it for years so I figured it had probably gone bad!) The garbage also got a lot of expired meds, sunscreens, and beauty products. My children's bathroom will benefit from the fish decorations in our window once we get the new shelf hung up in their bathroom.
5. Tell me one of your proudest moments during this challenge?
When I walked in to the bathroom sometime during the 3rd week of the challenge and it was clean! There was no clutter on the counter top, nothing fell out on top of me when I opened the cabinet door. We could find everything when we needed it! Yup, that felt pretty darn awesome!!
6. Explain any organizing “tools” you used to help you create additional space and to establish some limits and boundaries?
For me it was using baskets, bowls, and containers I already had to hold items that needed to be corraled. I have a bowl in the top drawer of the 4 drawer organizer that holds nail polish. All little beauty tools (nail clippers, tweezers, etc) are in a zipper bag. I used a jewelry box from IKEA to hold hair items (bobby pins, elastic ponytail holders, etc.) A basket under the sink holds extra tubes of toothpaste, bars of soap, cough drops, etc. That basket is pretty much full right now so I can't buy more toothpaste, etc. until there is room in the basket for them. Finding things around the house and thinking "Hey I could use that to hold (insert item here)" became a really fun game!
7. What is ONE piece of organizing advice you’ve learned on this journey that you could encourage someone else with?
Get rid of the junk BEFORE it takes over! There was no reason for me to have 4 boxes of hair dye when I don't even dye my hair! There was no reason to have 8 candles (yes, 8!!!) under my sink when I only light 1 or 2 when I'm soaking in the tub. Throw away stuff every year as they expire instead of 3 years later!! Doing a regular purge will help me be able to keep it from ever getting like that again.
So, without further ado here are the before and after pictures.
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| Bathroom before. Our bathroom is hard to get a good picture of from either inside or outside! |
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| Bathroom after. You can clearly see less on top of the medicine cabinet and the counter is clean. |
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| This is the vanity area when you first walk in. You can see the two organizers we added to give us more storage. |
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| The vanity area after. Oh yea. I'm liking this! And I'm loving the Windex Touch Up (see it there in the corner?) Have you tried it yet? I have one in each bathroom and in the kitchen. I LOVE it!! |
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| The top drawer of the 4 drawer organizer before. A holy mess!! |
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| Top drawer after: bowl with nail polishes, striped bag holds makeup, black bag holds beauty. |
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| 2nd drawer before. A lot of this stuff hit the trash! |
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| 2nd drawer after- now holds paper products: Q-Tips, travel tissues, makeup sponges. |
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| 3rd drawer before. |
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| 3rd drawer after: contact supplies in front, travel products and extra razor heads for Steven in the basket, travel toothpastes and floss in the zipper pouch. A bar of soap for travel in the yellow case. |
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| 4th drawer before. |
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| 4th drawer after- hair products, brush and combs, sponge curlers for Brianna, hair accessories in the black box (from Ikea). |
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| Under sink cabinet before. YIKES!!! What else can we throw in?!?! |
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| Under sink cabinet after. Nothing falls out on top of us when we open the door! Success!! |
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| Close up left side: hair appliances, hair spray and heat protector. You can also see toilet paper and breast pads hiding in the corner. |
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| Close up right side. The basket holds extra toothpaste, bar soap, contact supplies, etc. Behind that is extra hairspray, hand sanitizer, liquid soap refill and my husbands electric hair trimmers. I'm not allowed to buy more of this stuff for a while, no matter how good the sale because I just don't have room for more right now! :-) |
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| Medicine cabinet before. |
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| Medicine cabinet after. |
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| Inside of medicine cabinet before. A lot of meds got thrown out because they were expired. As did some beauty products that were hiding in here. They were several years expired for the most part. Yuck! |
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| Inside view after. You can see I decided to put baby powder up on top, as well as some medicated mouth wash in order to try to keep them out of reach of kids who make big messes!! |
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| Close up of bottom shelf: 1st Aid items, pain relievers, tummy aides, foot treatments. |
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| Close up of top shelf: Cold and flu, allergy, prescriptions and asthma. |
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| Close up of the outside shelf. My stuff corralled in a box on the left. Hubby on the right. Still looking for a box similar to mine to hold Steven's stuff. |
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| Window before and after! We've bought a shelf to move some of these fish items to the kids bathroom (they have a fish theme) but we haven't hung it up. Hopefully that will happen this week and this stuff can move on and out! |
So, that's the bathroom! It is so much more functional now that we can find everything. Thing's are being put back where they belong (so far!) and the countertops are staying clean! I don't know how we ever survived using this space before we had some organization in here. What we were doing was clearly not working!!
Going over to link this up at
Org Junkie! Come check up on everyone!
2 comments:
I was thinking it didn't look bad at all in your before pics, but I see that most of your work was in the hidden spots! ;) I've had many cabinets just like yours under the sink. Another great job!
Hahaha! Yeah, I tend to be the master of hiding my clutter! It looks fine until you open that door and then....wham!!! Thanks for another kind comment!
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