by Eileen Roth
Hobby room: There are a number of craft organizers available to store hobby supplies, from model glue to beads. Care and cleanup are key if you’re getting into paint, ink, and other messy things. Wash up right after use, and put markers, knitting needles, ink pads, coin collections, stamp collections, small pieces, and dangerous or poisonous tools far away from curious little eyes and hands. Keeping the room clean can also motivate you to come in and pull out your latest project.
Expedite cleanup by skipping the carpet in this room, especially if you’re using glue or paint.
Home office: Save space by combining your desk and computer station into one with a specially designed piece or a desk with an extension. Exception: If you like to work on the computer while someone else is doing homework, a separate desk and computer table may be the way to go. Be sure you have some drawers in the desk to store things; add a file cabinet for papers and a bookcase for books. For more information on a home office and household information center, see Chapter 14.
With peace permeating your personal retreats, you should all be resting easy. Go take a breather. There’s plenty more organizing ahead!
Chapter 7
Bathe and Beautify: Creating Functional Bathrooms
In This Chapter
Improving your grooming with P-L-A-C-E
Defusing bathroom danger zones
Medicine cabinet Rx
Folding and stacking techniques to line up linens
Ending bad bathroom days and empty paper rolls
T alk about traffic! Some households should have stoplights installed to direct the flow of residents in and out of the bathrooms, and if you have teenagers, you may need a timer too. How can you keep order in a room so public, yet so intimate — the repository of personal care regimes for every member of the family?
Getting organized in the bathroom can make your mornings go faster and the nightly beeline for bed pick up speed and ease. Perfect your look by arranging all your toiletries within fingertip reach, and polish up your image with well-ordered facilities you can present to guests and visiting repair people without shame. With beautiful bathrooms, organization gets personal.
Where Order Meets Indulgence
Tackle the bathrooms one at a time. You may start with the master bath for inspiration; move on to the family bathroom, where you have your work cut out for you; and finish up with a finesse to the guest baths. In each room, select one section at a time — the countertop, cabinets, drawers, shower and bath, or linen closet and use the five-step P-L-A-C-E system to whip everything into shape and beautify your bathroom space.
Purge: Toss odds and ends of soap and old, worn, or excess washcloths, towels, sheets, sponges, scrubbers, and loofahs. Eye shadow, lipstick, and blush more than 2 years old; foundation and powder more than 1 year old; and eyeliner or mascara more than 6 months old are neither hygienic nor high quality anymore. So throw them away, along with any personal care products that you haven’t used in the last year. Check dates on medications and dispose of expired ones. Are you using all those travel products collected on your trips? If not, out they go. Old or extra magazines can move to the family room or the trash.
Like with like: Organize personal-care items and supplies by type in your cabinet drawers, underneath the cabinet, or on linen closet shelves. Shower and bath items can be kept on standing or hanging racks by type or by person. Linen closet items may encompass towels, sheets, medicines, and cleaning supplies, all arranged into like groupings.
Access: Place items close to where they’re used but out of bathroom users’ way, considering safety issues if children are in the house. Counter-top items can move to the medicine cabinet, drawers, and under-sink cupboards. Medications need a cool, dry shelf out of the reach of small kids. Extra supplies belong in the linen closet, with the things you use most frequently stored on the middle shelves.
Contain: Use baskets, drawers, and/or drawer dividers to contain items by like type: cosmetics, personal care products, medicines, hair accessories, nail supplies. Put anything that can spill in a leak-proof container. Label containers so it’s easy to put things back from where they came.
Evaluate: Can you find everything you need to get ready on the sleepiest morning and get to bed on a dog-tired night? Can you shave, style your hair, and apply makeup without taking a step? Is keeping the guest bathroom neat enough for strangers easy? Do you know just where to look when you run out of supplies? Are family members getting in and out of the bathroom fast enough to fit your schedule?
The Organizational Conundrum: Sink and Vanity
Though different people may frequent the master and family bathrooms, you can apply the same logic to both. As always, finish one room before moving on to the next.
If you have a nice, big counter alongside your sink, count yourself lucky and then count up how much stuff is cluttering the space. Things left on the countertop look messy, attract dust, and get in the way of your grooming routines. Here’s what can stay out on your sink or countertop:
Hand soap
Drinking glasses
Box of tissues
Clock
Radio
Keep a clock set five minutes fast in all the main bathrooms to get you moving in the morning. That you’re in on the trick doesn’t matter; the psychology works on sleepyheads.
For the rest of your countertop display, put everything away closest to where you usually access it. Elegant perfume bottles can grace a bureau in the bedroom. Shaving supplies go into a cabinet or drawer, along with cosmetics, hair products, and bath things. Slip the blow dryer down below, under the sink. Read on for more details about what goes where — then come back and clear.
If your bathroom scores low on drawers and you have a clear corner on the counter, get a set of small countertop drawers to keep your cosmetics and hair accessories neat and invisible. Figure 7-1 shows this sleight-of-hand. (Consider safety if children visit this bathroom.)
Figure 7-1: Countertop drawers expand your options for cosmetic and accessory storage.
Photo courtesy of Get Organized!
Locate your wastebasket near the sink so tossing out tissues, cotton balls, and razor blades is easy. Plastic is best for bathroom trash bins; a bag lining keeps the wastebasket clean and protects it from corrosive agents such as nail polish remover.
Keep a couple of extra trash bags at the bottom of the wastebasket underneath the open one, so that a replacement is always ready to go.
Medicine cabinet: a misnomer
Whoever named the medicine cabinet must have had excellent health because the medicine cabinet is a terrible place to keep any kind of medication for three reasons:
Safety: This cabinet is all too accessible to children so even if none live with you but some pass through now and then, keep small stomachs safe from the dangers of all medications, from aspirin to iodine, by storing them on high or locked shelves.
Spoilage: Heat and humidity from the shower and bath can quickly dissipate the potency of drugs and dietary supplements. Head for drier, cooler ground.
Accessibility: Many medications are meant to be taken with food. Unless you eat breakfast in the bathroom, that would put their closest use in the kitchen.
Now that you have the shelves cleared out, here’s how to fill them up. Most medicine cabinets have three removable shelves that slide into slots of varying heights. If you have such adjustable architecture, match altitude to access by making the top shelf the highest to fit tall items. That leaves smaller things for the lower shelves, where you can easily spot them, and the shortest for the middle shelf. Here is an example:
Top shelf: Hair spray, gel, mousse, shaving cream, aftershave, cologne, antiperspirant, mouthwash
Middle/shortest: Toothpaste and toothbrushes, dental floss, razor and refill blades
Bottom/medium height: Facial cleansers and lotions, makeup remover and pads, contact lens supplies, eye drops, nasal spray
D
o you really want a day’s worth of dust on something you put in your mouth? If not, skip the countertop display and hang your toothbrushes from slots in a medicine cabinet shelf instead. Get a different color brush for each bathroom user, and then write down the color code, noting the date the brush was put in service to remind you to replace it six months later. (Get a free one by scheduling a biannual checkup with the dentist.)
Dividing it up: Drawers
Divide your bathroom drawers for fingertip management of the snarl of items commonly found there. Dividers can range from 2-x-2-inch plastic trays and up to full-drawer sectioned trays. Special cosmetics dividers are designed to hold lipsticks, eye shadows, and so forth; others are sized to hold jewelry. Measure your drawers, count your categories, and shop.
If you have expensive jewelry, the bathroom is too public a place to store it. Keep your collection on the bedroom bureau or in a fireproof box to maintain peace of mind.
Got just one bathroom drawer? Unless you’re a guy, this is probably the place for cosmetics and basic hair tools. Slip in hair accessories if they fit. A rolling cart of drawers is a great addition when you’re short on built-ins. It works and it moves. See Table 7-1 for using bathroom drawer space effectively.
Table 7-1Divine Bathroom Drawers Drawer Items
Cosmetic center Foundation, blush, lipstick, eyeliner and shadow,
mascara, sponges, brushes, tools
Hair care center Comb, brush, headbands, barrettes, clips, hairpins,
bobby pins, ponytail holders
Jewelry center Earrings, necklaces, bracelets, watches, pins, jewelry
cleaner, polishing cloth
Medications made simple and safe
Whether you pop a multivitamin once a day or take a complicated regime of pills by the hour, a well-managed medication system can make a big difference to your health.
Store safe and smart. Keep all medications out of the reach of children, away from the heat and humidity of the bath, and closest to where you take them. This may mean that your daily dose goes into a kitchen cabinet for swallowing after meals, while allergy medicines are stored on the top shelf of the linen closet.
Group medications by like type. Pain relievers, stomach remedies, sleep aids, and supplements may be located in different places according to the rule of access.
Stay up-to-date. Check the expiration dates on both prescription and over-the-counter medications and pitch them when their time has come (usually a year).
Keep it straight. If you take several medications each day, pill boxes with slots for each dose can make life much easier and prevent potentially dangerous mishaps.
911! Keep a bottle of ipecac syrup in your first aid kit to induce vomiting in the event of poisoning or dangerous drug reactions. Post the number of your local emergency room on the fridge or close to the phone.
Marilyn’s kids were always sick from allergies and colds, and she was afraid that in all the dispensing she’d give someone her blood-thinning medication instead of a decongestant. I recommended two baskets — a blue one for all the kids’ needs that Marilyn can reach for when she hears a sneeze, and a pink basket labeled “Adult Medicine” where she can easily find her prescription.
Storing: Under-the-sink cabinets
The space under the sink is a primary storage area for most bathrooms but because shelves are rare in these cabinets, pandemonium is all too common. Solve this problem with space-expanding options:
Wire-coated shelves are a quick, no-installation way to add a level to your cabinet. Buy the stackable or multitiered sort if you have lots of vertical space.
Pullout shelves slide out of the cabinet to save you from having to reach inside.
Add a shelf by buying a piece of wood to size and nailing it in. You may want to make your shelf half the cabinet’s depth to leave room for tall things in front.
Hang a caddy inside the cabinet door for hair dryers and curling irons. Check out Figure 7-2, and don’t forget to account for clearance space.
Figure 7-2: Cabinet door caddy for hair dryer, curling iron, detangler, and brushes.
Photo courtesy of Get Organized!
Next, group your items by like type to create under sink centers and contain them in clear containers or baskets. Table 7-2 shows you how.
Table 7-2Under Sink Centers Centers Items
Hair care center Dryer, curling iron, straightener
Nail care center Manicure set, nail polish, polish remover, pads
Feminine hygiene Tampons, pads, freshness products
center
Sun protection center Sunscreen, self-tanner, after-sun moisturizer (move to the
linen closet for off-season storage)
Cleaning supply center Scouring powder, spray cleanser, glass cleaner,
(if no small children disinfectant, toilet bowl cleaner
in the house)
Plumbing center Plunger, drain unclogger
If your bathroom serves a large family, get each person a different colored basket to stow personal things in the under-sink cabinet.
Arrange items in the cabinet according to access — closest for use or daily need. That means the hair dryer should be on the side near the electrical outlet and hopefully, your plunger is used infrequently enough that it can go in the back.
Anything that overflows from your bathroom cabinet space can go in the linen closet, if you have one. Coming up short? Try the following:
Try the various shelving or cabinet units that go above the toilet or stand freely on the floor. Some even have wheels for maximum mobility. Skip open-back shelves, which invite things to fall down behind.
Open shelves look cluttered, so contain items when you can — including a toilet paper holder that conceals extra rolls while keeping them close at hand, and a container to hold the toilet brush.
If you like to have reading material within reach, get a basket or magazine rack to hold up to half a dozen magazines. You don’t need more here! Save space with containers designed to hold magazines on the bottom and extra toilet paper rolls on top.
Shower and Bath
Who knew keeping clean could be so complicated? If you have the same sort of array of personal care products in your bath or shower and piles of towels all around that I see in my clients’ homes, you’re well aware of the problem that cleanliness presents: more supplies than space.
Where to hang the towels
Install a towel bar for each person that can hold a washcloth, hand towel, and bath towel. Towel bars are easy to add to a bathroom and can keep towels off the floor and other people from snatching yours. One person can use the shower door bar if you don’t have a bath mat hanging there; the back of the door provides another bar-hanging spot. For big families in small bathrooms, double up the hand and bath towel to squeeze two people onto one bar — if you absolutely must. Another space-saving option for a bathroom with four or more users is the towel bar that hangs on the door hinge pictured in Figure 7-3.
Put a pair of hooks on the back of the bathroom door to hold clothes and robes. Take down the clothes when you return the robe.
Figure 7-3: This towel bar uses the door hinge for more hanging space.
Personal care products and bath toys
Every shower and bath needs storage systems to hold shampoo, conditioner, skin cleansers, brushes, scrubbers, loofahs, razors, and shaving cream. These can take the form of corner shelves, a rack that hangs from the shower- head, or a tension-rod pole that extends from the top of a bathtub to the ceiling and holds shelves made from wire racking or with holes to let the water drain through (skip the solid, water-collecting ones). Depending upon the size of your family, you can assign shelves by like products or by person.
Rather bathe than shower? You may want all your supplies on hand without standing up to reach the soap, so get a tray that fits across the width of the tub to hold bath essentials. Some come with a book holder, so you can relax and read without
worrying about your best-seller getting wet, as you see in Figure 7-4.
Figure 7-4: Relax and read in a bubble bath.
Photo courtesy of Lillian Vernon.
Next take on the rubber duckies: Put kids’ bath toys in a mesh bag and hang it from the faucet. If the bath toys don’t fit, you have too many . . . unless you have a baby, whose toys are often super-size. Keep those in a dishpan that goes in the under-sink cabinet or floor of the linen closet between baths.
Hand washables solution: No wet stuff draped on the towels
Doing small hand-wash jobs in the bathroom may be more convenient than to trudge down to the laundry room, but lingerie draped all over is not an attractive sight. Get a closed, nontransparent hamper to hold hand-wash items until washing day, and then dry them on a wire grid rack that hangs over the showerhead, a horizontal rack that sits inside or across the bathtub (this rack is great for sweaters too), or an old-fashioned folding wooden drying rack.