Small rooms are always bit tricky in decoration and organization wise. Our project at the moment is the small bathroom in our home. First post is about the space we start with and how we ended up with the need of organization update.
Our neighbours from upstairs had a nasty surprise last autumn when a water pipe broke down. That meant big renovation was ahead for them but it also meant some uncomfortable things for us as our bathroom is right under theirs.
Last months have been endless roller coaster from ear breaking drilling to anxiety of not knowing when the workers are going to pop by. The whole progress has been terrible: no-one knows anything or at least isn’t telling, unexpected projects come by and now the renovation is going one and a half month over time.
Right now the walls are missing few tiles, there is partly fixed hole the size of my head on the upper corner of our bathroom wall and the ceiling is missing the paint and stuff. Of course we needed to empty the bathroom before all of this started and right now most of our soaps, laundry, cleaning products and towels have a party in the living room.
New perspective in the middle of the chaos
We don’t enjoy the situation. In our 58 square meter two-rooms-plus-kitchen-and-bathroom apartment one misplaced thing knocks everything astray. It gets especially annoying when you start to get too used to having the drying rack right beside the front door.
But there is also the bright side. Now we have a chance to clean the bathroom from top to bottom and figure out its whole organization from the start. This is something we have been pushing forward for a long time already. Reorganizing always takes so much time and thinking but having motivation and a good plan sure is helpful. We are trying to achieve bit more airy and minimalistic look with our organization this time around.
Small bathrooms are tricky
Our bathroom is not big nor has natural light which makes it feel even more cramped. We rent, so there’s no way we can fix things like a tub or tiles. When we moved in we painted the room and installed a rod for towels. That’s it. We have a nice white paint which works well with clean white light but there has been lot of jugs and boxes for things like laundry powder, make-up, and extra soaps and other products. All that stuff makes the room look cluttered and dark.
Everything has been quite the same since we moved in. Only change is that the bathroom houses now the new laundry machine we got right before holidays. It’s shiny and white (perfect fit for us) and says “beep” every time we turn on the light. Such a cutie!
Our bathroom works kind of triple duty as “a master bathroom”, “a guest bathroom” and “a laundry room”. It means the room has to look nice when we have visitors, it has to work as our daily spot for showers and grooming and there has to be space for laundry and cleaning products.
Our bathroom floor plan reveals the tricky space we have to tackle.
Right now Janina’s daily stuff is sailing on the shelves without destination.
Save only what you need
Most of the problems with organization come because the room is too full to begin with. All the boxes and containers have a nasty habit of filling with useless stuff and most of the times hoarding is unnecessary and troublesome.
So the first step for us was to go through our boxes and throw out all the outdated, mostly used, old or just unnecessary things. We did same with the towels and ended up cutting few of the oldest ones into small pieces for kitchen use and cleaning. So handy! We are trying to figure out what other stuff we are going to ditch. Soap and shampoo bottles are always the hard part in decoration wise with their different colours and patterns but we think we found a good solution for us.
That’s something you can look forward in a part 2 when we actually can start to put things bag into the bathroom and begin the tetris. Hopefully in next few weeks!
Now we have figured out what room has to include and what we can throw away. Do you have killer tricks for small bathrooms?
