When I decided to tackle the clutter on my bathroom counter, mine looked something like this. Every day I’d have to move fourteen different bottles just to get my toothbrush and let me tell you… It drove me absolutely bonkers! On the mornings I was late I’d knock over three bottles trying to reach my moisturiser.
Sound familiar? ! I’d splurged on a marble-effect counter thinking it would make me feel like my bathroom was ‘put together’, when really it just highlighted how cluttered everything looked. Foundation pots, skincare serums, hairspray…. it piled up quickly!
One Tuesday morning I brushed my rather pricey moisturiser off the counter and into the sink while reaching for my toothpaste. £60 gone down the drain. Literally.
While I was watching it drain, I had an epiphany.
Enough was enough. I began my mission by decluttering the drawers: Oh the tragedy of an overflowing bathroom drawer. When you open yours what do you see?
Old broken hair ties? Containers with weird powders in them? Masks you haven’t used since March?
Yours probably isn’t as bad as mine was. I purchased these handy drawer organisersfrom John Lewis for around £25. Before I had organisers, I had one large drawer that I threw everything into.
Think kitchen junk drawer. You open it, look at the mound of miscellany in horror, and immediately close it. No one wants to deal with that.
My bathroom drawers used to look messy because I let them be messy. Simple bamboo dividers with felt on the bottoms stopped everything from sliding around when I opened and closed the drawer. I dedicated one section to skincare products I use daily, one for makeup essentials, and one for hair ties/bobby pins.
Now that I had the drawers sorted I could breath easy…but only for a second. Let’s face it, if you’re tackling bathroom organisation you have too much stuff. Time to be ruthless.
If I haven’t used it in 2020, I tossed it. Face mask broke me out? Gone.
Lipstick I bought in 2020 and wore twice? Adios! Here’s where I blew my whole organising-budget: over-the-toilet shelving.
Full disclosure, I was a snob about those over toilet shelving units. In my mind they looked cheap and lazy. Until I saw my friend Sarah’s bathroom.
Sarah lives in a super small flat with a teeny bathroom. She had an all-white wood over toilet shelving unit with gold brackets filled with adorable glass jars. Plants hung from the rack.
I thought, wow that looks so nice. Wait… am I judging these pieces because they’re cheap? I found this Alex Unit at IKEA for £40.
The installation was HORRIBLE. Like, one of the shelves came backwards no matter how many times I read the directions (which were written in ancient Egyptian) painful. But oh once I got it assembled how glorious it was!
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Now I had a place to store all of my Costco-sized conditioner! The key is making it look sleek, not like you tried to hide the fact you shop at Costco. I bought these shampoo/body wash dispensersto decant my Costco mega bottles into.
I found glass ones at TK Maxx that were around £8 each. It’s a pain, but kind of fun to decant everything! One more tip about those shelves: towels.
I used to hang my towel on the tiny hook in the bathroom door creating a bulky knot that never fully dried. Once I hung a towel rack (and by rack, I mean heated towel rail. I’ve gone premium, what can I say?) I stopped this issue.
Bonus-B: my towels actually are warm when I get out of the shower! Speaking of towels, clear drawer dividers were life changing. The bathroom towel I used daily didn’t fit in with my ironed, perfectly folded towels.
These drawer dividers kept it neat and made my towels accessible. Next up, the medicine cabinet. Same rule applies: toss, toss, toss.
Anything expired? Trash. Things I used daily?
Keep. Sort by category. Pain killers in one spot, first aid in another.
Face treatments on the bottom shelf since I wanted to see those everyday. I even went as far as labelling tiny areas in my medicine cabinet. This one is totally up to you, but for me it eliminated the “where did I put that last bottle of antiseptic cream?” panic when my boyfriend cuts himself shaving on my bathroom floor.
Don’t knock wall-mounted dispensers until you’ve tried them. I installed three of them next to my shower. One for shampoo, one for conditioner, one for body wash.
Now I don’t knock them over with my elbows or run out mid-shower bc I couldn’t see the bottom to know if I had more. The plastic ones linked above were only about £15 each and I’ve had them for two years with no problems. Invest in good silicone pumps that can withstand the abuse of a typical family.
I struggled with storage options in my medicine cabinet. Those shelves aren’t very deep so anything too wide wouldn’t fit nicely. Instead I used these small stackable containers typically used for kitchen spices to corral cotton buds and hair pins.
It sounds annoying, but works really well. And you can see everything at-a-glance. Tip: buy containers as you need them.
I made the mistake of buying twelve identical food jars and having half sit in my kitchen cabinet unused.
Start small, if you love the system add to it! Finally!
Time to wipe down that counter. Since everything had a ‘home’, I didn’t have to move twenty bottles just to wipe down my counter. Not only did my bathroom declutter take half the time, but it actually stayed cleaner!
Keep up with your systems and you bathroom will never look like this again. I spend five minutes every Sunday putting everything back in its rightful place and checking to see if we’re out of anything. It was a tedious process, but totally worth it.
For about £200 and three weekends, I was able to transform my chaotic bathroom into a manageable system. And quite honestly, for the forty-five minutes I wasted digging through my counter every morning IT WAS WELL WORTH THE MONEY TO STOP THE MADNESS. Not to mention, my moisturiser is still on my counter. 🙌🏼
