The New Year usually means turning over a new leaf–and for many of us that includes a resolution to be more organized. Walmart challenged me to go out with the old and in with the new by organizing and decluttering a problem area of my home. I chose the kids bathroom upstairs.
Now as I’ve mentioned before-I live in an old house. A really old house–1890 type old. And old houses have, well, peculiarities. One of those types of weird old house things is our upstairs bathroom:
Yes-you are seeing that picture right-I am standing on one side of the door looking through the bathroom to the door on the other side. What you don’t see is that in the bathroom to the right there is yet another door that leads into Princess’s bedroom (which was the original master bedroom until the previous owners renovated the attic to make the master bed and bath suite Yankee Bill & I enjoy now).
That’s right-the bathroom has THREE doors leading into, one of which has a glass window (I put that “frosted” glass window cling stuff on it for privacy sake), and it’s the main hallway between the back kitchen stairs and the rest of the house. As best as I can tell the closet in the dining room downstairs actually was the entrance to the original set of stairs up and would have ended up in this room. I think that it was a landing, not a bathroom originally–most likely there was only a “water closet” on the first floor initially. We think that the room on the far side there was the maid’s/cook’s room as it was located directly over the kitchen AND is the only room in the house with really terrible, barely matched up molding around the windows as opposed to all the lovely wood in every single other room.
Be that as it may-that particular bathroom is a problem in many ways. Once you get inside and take a look at the “closet” it doesn’t get much better.
First of all the closet isn’t actually a closet. At some point someone just built a small wall out into the room and then stuck up some shelves in there. It’s narrowish and there isn’t an actual door frame or door. When we moved in it was just open with shelving in it–so I hung a shower curtain rod across the top and sewed up a really long curtain (these are 9 foot ceilings to nothing off the shelf was going to fit) to act as a door so we could store items in there without showing the world.
Of course it became a mess. The kids just tossed things in there, half the time stuff is poking out from behind the curtains. The pull towels out from the bottom of the shelf and the rest topple over and make a mess. . . Well, you’ve got eyes, you can see the picture above.
So I went out to Walmart and purchased a few items:
I got a small 3 tier shelf, several sizes of white Mainstay brand storage baskets and a couple of Great Value large rectangle containers that were actually over in the section where the tinfoil and plastic wrap are sold.
My thought process was this. I need to get the towels down where the kids can easily reach them so that they won’t pull everything out. Since they are now old enough to be helping with the laundry this also means they would be at a height where they can reasonably be expected to put the clean and rolled towels away for me.
In the rest of the closet, the items that the kids will be using need to be placed so that they will be within reach without having to use a stool or anything. The items that are for my use can be up higher, and things that get used very infrequently can go up on the top shelf.
By using baskets and bins I can “containerize” like items–they can be sorted by type and then the entire bin can be removed from the shelf, the needed item can be located, and then the bin can be returned to it’s place. If the bins needed to be stacked two deep then the items that are used most frequently should be placed in front and items that are rarely used could be placed in back.
Yes, I know all that sounds like common sense–but seriously, how often do we actually take the time to arrange things that way?
Here are the results!
I set up the adjustable 3 tier shelves so that the bottom shelf was high enough to fit a standard pack of 12 toilet paper rolls underneath it on the floor. Then I used the two shelves for my towels–regular bath towels on bottom, beach size on top. The top of the shelf is to stack washcloths and hand towels. The space to the left can be used to stack paper towel rolls (they get stored in there) and if I angle the steam mop backwards it will fit under the shelf there as well.
The shelves above have been tamed with the bins. The bottom most shelf is still within reach of the kids, so I gave their items priority there. The big bin on the right is full of hair stuff–brushes, hair dryer, leave in and spray conditioner, extra shampoo etc. The two bins on the left are the “medicine chest”–the one in back are the rarely used items like petroleum jelly, witch hazel, mineral oil–and the bin in front has band aids, Neosporin, cough syrup etc. A container of cotton balls (in the front) and a few types of hand lotion are in the middle-if that starts to get out of control I’ll pick up another bin.
The first wire shelf is just a bit to high for the kids to access easily-so the items there are not things they really need to access. I’ve got a bin with all the dogs bath items (dog shampoo, nail clippers etc), a bin with the cleaning supplies, and a couple of lidded containers with extra toothbrushes/floss and hair ties etc. The extra shelf space is used for a few odd items that don’t fit in the bins–a particular aloe hair treatment we use when princess swims a lot and some feminine hygiene items that are stored there for guest emergencies and “someday”.
Up at the very top are some things that make sense to be in the bathroom but barely ever get used. A heating pad. A nebulizer (from when Buddy had bronchitis as an infant), and the humidifier. Even I need a stool to get things off this shelf–remember, it’s a 9 foot ceiling–but that’s ok. If I actually need any of it I can grab a stool.
Of course, there were a lot of items that I removed completely from the closet. There were probably 6 various bottles of liquid medicines (cough syrup, decongestant, antihistamines etc) that were about 4 years out of date that I tossed. There were a bunch of hotel sized lotions and soaps that were mostly gone or covered in goo that also hit the trash. I found an entire drawer of that plastic unit full of bath toys from when the kids still played in the tub (will be washed in the dishwasher and then given away). There was my entire stockpile of vitamins and supplements which I always forget to take since they are hidden up there-they are moved down to the kitchen pantry. Decluttering helps! As a wise woman once told me “you can’t organize clutter”–sometimes you just have to get it out of your house!
So–what areas are your biggest clutter problems in your house?
Karen says
The bookshelf by the front door is my nemesis. It is a dumping ground for EVERYTHING. I need to get bins to at least contain the beasts.
Deborah Aldridge says
That is a very nice, neat closet. Now, if you can just figure out how to find an old folding louvered door, it would be perfect. First things first, though. Get back to buying seeds for next year’s garden!
Jenn @ Frugal Upstate says
Deborah-I am not a fan of the louvered door-we’ve got one as the door on our bathroom in the MBR and it is ALWAYS coming off the track. Plus I’d have to create some sort of top doorsill/frame to hang it off of. . . Now yes, I’m back to perusing seed catalogs. Gardening season can’t come soon enough for me 🙂