Deceitful Design: Bathroom Closet Remodel

The problem with organizing is that your storage spaces can be very deceitful.  You take the time to go through a closet and weed out what you don't need, arrange everything to look nice and then you turn around and it is a mess again.  I ran into this problem repeatedly with my bathroom closet.  The closet holds most of our personal care items and I kept trying to keep it organized by going in every couple of months and grouping similar items together like deodorant, shampoo, lotion, etc together in a row.  Lesson learned, it is hard to keep things neat and tidy in a row unless you never touch them.  Maybe I should have called it my deodorant museum instead of a bathroom closet.

In an earlier post I talked about the idea that items need a proper home to stay organized.  Here I am thinking that the closet is a proper home, yet the whole organization thing isn't happening.  But why?  After working on a couple different organization projects I figured it out.  The shelves in my closet are too large to serve as a home for so many random items.  I need to group similar items into smaller spaces within each shelf.  Like bedrooms within a home.

I knew that I wanted to add some bins or baskets to my bathroom closet so I went to Michael's the week before.  They had a huge 50% off sale and I found three matching cute wicker baskets with cloth liners.  I have to be honest, design is not my strong suit.  I love organizing and I'm good at figuring out tricks to keeping your stuff in order but staging or making something looking like a page out of fancy magazine is my kryptonite.  I've often struggled to determine which storage containers to use in different situations.  Does it work better to have two really big containers or a lot of smaller containers?  Should the container have a lid or just be a basket?  Though I'm getting better and better at figuring the aesthetics out.

To start re-organizing my cluttered closet, I began with Organizing 101 and took everything out of the closet and placed it on a table where I could assess what I needed to store.  Maybe it was my mom brain or, it is possible that I was just feeling a little silly at the time, but as I worked to group items together I realized a fun theme was occurring.  I had shampoos, conditioners, hair products and face washes; things that you use on your head.

I had lotion, deodorant, body wash and sunscreen; all things that you use for your body.

And I had shaving cream, finger nail polish remover and foot spray; items you use on your legs and feet.

Head, shoulders, knees and toes!!

Back to Michael's.  I found the three baskets, which ended up being around $6 a piece.  I've been obsessed with chalkboard paint lately and Michael's has an entire isle dedicated to different chalkboard paint items.  I found these three cute clothes pin signs for $.75 each.  I have a 4 year old so my access to chalk is bountiful.  

To assemble the baskets I placed each group of products in a basket, wrote Head, Shoulders and Knees & Toes on the signs and placed them back in the bathroom closet.  You really can't get easier than that!

I was worried that by having the items in a basket I wouldn't be able to see each item but I was happy to see how easy it is to keep an inventory of what products I have and what I might need.  I was also afraid that the chalkboard signs would get smudged or smeared but they have stayed perfectly intact since I completed the project.  I also made a point of re-arranging the closet so that more potentially hazardous items are up higher and items that my daughters might need to reach are lower (towels, toilet paper, tissues, etc).  I put anything that we don't use on a regular basis, like our toiletry travel bags on the top shelf.

And take a look at my new and improved closet!  It not only looks worlds better but it is exponentially more functional.  I am no longer knocking over every single item in the closet when I want to figure out if I have any more conditioner left.  Success!