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!

Eliminating Clutter Magnets

We all have that hidden (or not so hidden) space that we shove the little odds and ends that don't seem to have a proper home.  But when did the crap drawer turn into a crap closet or even a crap room?  It is hard to know where to put all your stuff.  Especially when you have a hard time throwing things away and you have multiple generations of your family's stuff stored in your house, like we do.

I've been thinking a lot about why certain things or areas tend to get cluttered and others stay organized and came to two realizations.  My inspiration coming from this set of markers.

We have some how managed to keep every single marker from this set for over a year.  With the markers being owned by a four year old, it just didn't add up.  None of the markers have disappeared, none are missing their caps, none are dried out.  Why are the markers in perfect order but all of our crayons are in complete disarray?  Dumped and broken in drawers, boxes, my purse, everywhere!  We ask our daughter to clean up after she plays with her toys but it is hard to keep track of all those pieces and parts.

Then it dawned on me.  The markers have remained in their box because there is a specific spot for each and every marker.  If they had come in a box without a slot for each marker, they would be in the same condition as our crayons.  And you can apply the same idea to the areas of your house that are magnets for clutter.  You will be less likely to have clutter and chaos if you designate a specific and easy to remember/maintain spot for hard to place items (i.e. crap drawer contents).  Which is why so much of organizing is based on using labeled containers, bins, etc.

The same can be said for clutter.  If you have a drawer that has no purpose but to hold things that you don't know what to do with, it will remain your crap drawer.  We have a bowl on our kitchen table that has become the crap bowl.

I clean it out every month or two but it fills back up in a couple weeks.  (Don't worry, that's a clean diaper.)  When I remove the bowl from the table, I'm forced to find a place for all the items that I previously would have put in the bowl.  Crap bowl no more!  Take a closer look around your house and see if you can identify areas that have become a stopgap for your un-storable stuff.