Keeping your bathroom organized can be a challenging task, especially with cluttered countertops and messy drawers. Professional home organizer Cara Palmer emphasizes the importance of maintaining a clutter-free bathroom for a peaceful and rejuvenating environment. Instead of constantly organizing surface clutter, Palmer suggests addressing storage mistakes to improve functionality and create a calming space.
Making small, intentional changes to your bathroom storage can make a significant difference without the need for expensive adjustments. Utilizing vertical space, categorizing items, and using dividers in drawers and cabinets can help keep your bathroom neat and tidy. To help you avoid common storage mistakes, we consulted with five experts to provide valuable insights and solutions.
You’re not maximizing the available vertical space in your bathroom
While countertops, vanity drawers, and under-sink areas are convenient storage options, they often become cluttered. Cara Palmer suggests that there is untapped potential in utilizing vertical space in your bathroom for better organization and storage solutions.
She says, “Many homeowners focus solely on countertops and under-sink storage, neglecting the valuable vertical space in their bathrooms.”
To rectify this storage mistake, get creative and look for available vertical areas, like corners, empty wall space, and the back of the bathroom door and cabinets. Then, invest in hooks, mounting racks, and hanging shelves to make the most of the limited space. Palmer suggests, “Install floating shelves or over-the-toilet storage units to utilize wall space. Tall, narrow cabinets can fit in tight corners while providing substantial storage.” Once the countertop doesn’t seem overwhelmed, add decorative touches, like plants. Have a little leftover wall space or an awkward corner? Make wall-mounted racks, slim caddies, and narrow rolling carts, like SPACELEAD’s 3-Tier Storage Unit, your new best friends. “Over-the-door organizers or hooks can hold towels, robes, and toiletry bags. Consider installing small adhesive baskets inside cabinet doors for items like hair tools, makeup, or cleaning supplies,” she recommends.
Emphasizing the importance of the space above your bathroom’s door, Jodi Peterman, CEO and owner of Elizabeth Erin Designs, mentions in a Onions Australia exclusive, “This is a perfect place for a slim floating shelf to store extra towels or backstock items.” In case you have tall ceilings, she advises, “…put a built-in cabinet over the door to store all the bulky things that you do not need to access on a daily basis.”
Storing items in your drawers and under the sink without categorizing them
Do your drawers seem to get cluttered only after a few days of you organizing them? A lack of categorization might be to blame. Mindy Godding, a Certified Professional Organizer®, founder of Abundance Organizing®, and the president of National Association of Productivity and Organizing Professionals® (NAPO), agrees. She explains in her exclusive Onions Australia interview, “Even when contained, some groups can still feel visually cluttered because of the large quantity of small items in colorful packaging.” Besides, the clutter will make it difficult for you to keep track of your purchases, making expired and duplicate products your new reality. Palmer elaborates, “Throwing everything under the sink without any organizational system leads to forgotten products and duplicate purchases.”
To ensure you don’t double-spend or have to throw out your products unnecessarily, empty all your storage solutions and carefully edit your belongings. Throw away the products you no longer use or ones that are past their prime. Categorize the remaining and store them accordingly in items you can use to organize your bathroom. Palmer suggests, “Group similar items together (haircare, skincare, first aid, etc.) in labeled bins or baskets. This makes items easier to find and helps track what you have and what needs replenishing.” Don’t categorize them randomly, though, or it would be hard to maintain the drawers. Sub-categorize the products and toiletries based on a system that’s conducive to your lifestyle. For instance, if you have a different skincare regime for each weekday, store the products based on the day rather than sticking with broad categories. After you’re done, label the baskets and bins to maintain this system. “We recommend opaque bins with labels for categories like medicine, first aid, and skin care,” says Godding.
The opacity of the bins helps further keep things looking organized, as clear bins, though still neater than no bins at all, can come across visually messy when you can see the contents inside.
Not using dividers to keep your bathroom drawers organized
Are you guilty of throwing your makeup, skincare products, jewelry, and hair accessories haphazardly in the vanity drawers? If yes, you’re not the only one making this storage mistake. Speaking from experience, Godding shares, “The one bathroom storage mistake I see most frequently is that people have thrown items into their drawers without any structure or categorization.” This will lead to your delicate necklaces getting tangled in your hair brush’s bristles, or you spending precious time trying to find your favorite lipstick and bronzer.
Instead of spending your day locating or untangling items, Godding suggests using dedicated dividers. They’ll keep your drawers organized and prevent the stored items from tangling together. She says, “Simple drawer organizers give items boundaries and contain like items for easy visibility and no dusty tangles!” You can get adjustable dividers, such as Utoplike’s 4-piece Bamboo Adjustable Drawer Organizers, to create room for each type of item in your drawer. Otherwise, you can purchase clear dividers, like Vtopmart’s 25-piece Plastic Trays, to improve visibility. You’ll also have the flexibility to pick the right tray size for each item. For instance, you can assign slender ones to house your eyeliner and makeup brushes, and pick a broad one to comfortably store your face powders. However, if you’d rather not spend a lot of money on these tools, try DIY drawer dividers. Whichever way you go, ensure you have enough dividers to sort everything.
Ignoring the shower area and using the floor or the tub’s edge to store bath essentials
Although you might not soak in your bathtub regularly, you might be using its ledge to store your bath products and related accessories. This can feel especially convenient if you have a shower-tub combo and lack a recessed shower niche. The shower’s floor is another spot you may be using to place your toiletries.
