After a few posts of fun and festivities, I thought you might all be ready for some more organization! Since my bathroom vanity needed a little refreshing, I decided that would be a great way to kill two birds with one stone. Nothing like showing pics to the world to motivate you to do a little straightening and cleaning!!
Here is the underside of my bathroom cabinet, AFTER a little twenty minute tidy today. I am going to refrain from revealing my hubby’s side of the cabinet. Although it isn’t terrible, I wouldn’t think it would inspire anyone!
I also have two drawers for make-up, dental hygiene and hair things. Here is the before on those drawers…
As I always do with organization projects, I removed everything from the space, (one drawer at a time) tossed items that were old, or I just hadn’t used in two years, and wiped everything down to get things clean.
This is the tray I use for storing make-up, obviously it needed a good cleaning!
I then sorted everything and returned it to the drawer. Here is the drawer…
…and a breakdown of how I store things.
1.) The little brown box on the left holds random beauty tools I use on a semi-reguler basis and want easy access to: hair clippers, nail file, small scissors, tweezers…
2.) I use an old silverware tray (from mine & Jason’s first house together – ahhh!) to sort my make-up by category. Blush and eye shadows are in the far left compartment, brushes in the next, and lip sticks, lip liner, lip gloss, etc. in the far right compartment. The front section has items for my eyes – a tube of concealer, eye liner, liquid eye shadow and mascara.
I love using a silverware tray for make-up because it has great dividers, is easy to wash, and provides a good boundary for how much every day/regular use make-up I have at a time. Another perk of this tray is that it is super easy to take all of my make-up to another location and return it back to the drawer. If you like to use a different bathroom, go in your closet, sit at a dresser in your room… this is a great way to keep it organized, easy to access and transportable within your home.
I originally started using this tray when my kids were babies because they would want to come in and play with everything in the drawer when it was open. I could simply lift the tray out of the drawer, and place in out of their reach on my counter top while I was using it and then tuck it away when I was done.
3. I have miscellaneous and non-regular use make-up in a small caddy hidden in the back of the drawer. There are a couple of things I bought during “Clinique Bonus Time” for when I run out, a couple of items I switch out for summer and winter depending on how not-tan I am (I vary in my shades of white, really white, and glow in the dark white) and then all of those bonus items I think I might use, but haven’t busted out yet!
With things neatly tucked away, this is what I see from my side of the drawer when I get ready in the morning.
My other drawer is for hair supplies and dental care items. This drawer was the most cluttered, and the main reason I felt the need to tidy my side of the cabinet.
I know, it isn’t terrible and some of you are laughing at me right now. However, there were a lot of things in this drawer that I haven’t used in a long time and really needed to go.
I have been using a Sonicare toothbrush for months, and decided a toothbrush that has been sitting for that long probably needs to go in the trash. I’ll spare you the details, but the “medicine” and pill sorter were from my last pregnancy and c-section recovery – yes, my youngest is 3 years old – apparently it has been more like 3 years since I’ve cleaned these drawers! I’m not sure where the pink comb came from – I don’t think I’ve ever used it, and the hair ties, bobby pins, clips… are mostly things I bought, hated and will never use. As you might guess, this drawer was less about sorting and more about purging. I also wiped the drawer and dividers down just to get things clean for the next 2-3 years. 🙂
Here is now…
My last drawer is for my hairdryer, flatiron….. A few old tools I’m not ready to part with are stored in the back of the drawer in a box to keep them separated from my more updated things. I wrote about the t.p. roll cord covers in this post, and with those I don’t have to do much to keep this drawer nice and tidy. And notice – I am using one t.p. roll with no pretty paper covering it – aren’t you proud of me?!
If you don’t have a drawer to store your hairdryer and flatiron, I love these ideas…
In the photo on the left they attached a magazine file with 3M velcro strips to the inside of the cabinet door. On the right side they used 3M Velcro strips to attach pvc pipe in varying sizes to hold both the tool & its cord – same idea as the t.p. roll. Genius!
The last area of my bathroom I needed to sort was under the cabinet. You saw the after picture above, here is the before.
Shortly after moving into our house I picked up the silver shelving unit on the right side of the cabinet and then added some of my fave!fave!fave! clear storage boxes from The Container Store several years ago. It was really pretty organized from my last tidy, which tells me that the system I have in place is working well. Even though the system is working, I still needed to sort things, purge old items and reorder a bit.
I started with the boxes on the left. In the back of the cabinet I have a box on the bottom with bar soap that I want to keep but don’t really use very often. I can then stack another box on top of the soap, and leave the lid off for easy access. I have extra lotion, body wash, body spray… that I have mostly gotten as gifts. I don’t use it daily, but will grab a new bottle for the shower, my purse… occasionally. This is the more expensive, girlie stuff I wouldn’t want my kids or hubby to grab!
I use one more box without a lid to corral all of my daily toiletry items. (these are the standard shoe box size) I like that toiletries don’t fall over in the cabinet, the clear box allows me to easily identify what I need, and it provides me with a good boundary. I’m not sure if I’ve ever talked about boundaries with you all before 😉 but this boundary helps me use all of my hairspray, deodorant, lotion… before grabbing a new one. If I start to accumulate duplicates of items, I can’t fit everything I need in the box. Do you have any empty bottles taking up space in your bathroom?
In sorting through these things I also purged and incorporated the random bottles that had been hiding behind the wooden slat in the middle of the cabinet.
Here is that side of the cabinet finished…
Last, I went through everything that had accumulated in the metal basket and boxes on the right. The metal basket has mostly make-up bags that I have gotten as “free” gifts from Clinique. I can’t throw them away because they are so small and cute! and I actually do put them to use a lot. Addison has also discovered them and is equally obsessed with small cute bags! (don’t confuse this with purses – I don’t share her obsession with those!)
On top of the shelf is two more clear boxes from The Container Store – one standard shoe box and one men’s shoe box. The bottom box has random stuff in it I need to save, but almost never actually use.
This box has… an old pair of glasses … I need glasses only when I’m pregnant – which I guess means I could get rid of them since I won’t be getting pregnant again! …tanning goggles, teeth whitening trays, some special but not really in style jewelry, the box my husband gave me my wedding ring in (ahhhh! love him!) and other completely random things.
The smaller box is my portable mani / pedi kit.
I like having all of these items in one portable box so I can take it down to the living room and watch t.v. while I do my nails. I also find it is an easy way to contain everything, and make sure I don’t accumulate too much nail polish. The pink bag (yes, cute free Clinique bag) has clippers, and other nail tools that I have no idea what their name is.
And that’s all! Here is the “after” of the cabinet after a good sort & clean.
My cabinet base has managed to stay pretty clean all of these years, but if yours is starting to look worn or has water damage you might want to add laminate tiles like I did in my laundry room cabinet.
I also have extra toiletries, towels, first aid supplies, medicine… stored in our master linen closet which is also in our bathroom. I’ll show you how I order that space in my next organization post! For now, here is a little more inspiration from around the web.
I love this bathroom vanity from the Hi Sugarplum blog. It it similar to mine in layout, however she uses storage on the door and drawers instead of clear boxes. Her post also shows her drawers and how she organized them with dollar store and other thrifty finds.
This cabinet is great too, my favorite thing is the idea of a lazy susan to easily reach everything!
I also love the idea of using a magnetic board on your cabinet door like I made for my office. You can see in this photo that they used magnetic containers, like these spice containers, and magnetic hooks to store small items in a really convenient way! You could add the sheet metal to the back of a cabinet or the inside of a door, and even cover it pretty fabric like my message board.
I hope you are inspired to keep tackling those daunting projects, or just tidy up a few unruly spaces! Here is a little scary tidbit, in honor of Halloween – we all have about one more month to order our belongings before the holidays hit!!!