Reorganizing Small Multipurpose Bathroom – Part 2

How to organize a small multipurpose bathroom?

Our bathroom is tiny and it is supposed to serve double, no, triple duty as a toilet, bath room and laundry room. The renovation upstairs is over and now we too have our bathroom back. In the end we had to paint things again by ourselves, employees left the ceiling looking blotchy and didn’t come to fix the smaller scratches left behind by taping. We were not delighted by that, but thank goodness we still had some paint left over from the renovation we did when we moved in.

Needing a refresh of the part 1? Go to read it here!

So now that the base is okay – could be better, we still hate that the ceiling isn’t like it used to be – it’s time to start putting things back to their rightful places. We actually started doing this a good while ago as we really needed to free our living room but most of the stuff just ended up back to the spots they had been. No thinking involved.

Getting rid of that not-needed-junk

We don’t want to drag unused or unwanted stuff with us. So as we mentioned in part one, we tossed away all the unused things and were able to empty to boxes to use somewhere else. That also left us bit more breathing space on the shelves for decorating.

Trashed:

Unused hair accessories

Our hairstyles change during the years and so does our overall style. Accessories go out of style. Also after cropping your hair you don’t really need all those hair ties and bun shapers. Quick rule, if it’s not absolutely one of a kind thing and can’t be replaced later then you don’t need to store it if it just sits unused.

Old make-up and cosmetics

Even if you don’t want to admit it these products have an expiration date. Their structure, smell and useability changes so those are good to go. Some stuff might be still okay but if you don’t use it you don’t need to store it. Really, I don’t see any point on storing tons of make-up if you aren’t a professional and work as a make-up artist. In normal life you need just your few daily stuffs and maybe some fancy for special occasions.

Almost empty cosmetics bottles and jars

Lets face it. It is a really good habit of using the stuff before you get a new jar but if the previous one has been sitting on the shelf for weeks months it’s time to toss it.

Old toothbrushes

It’s perfect time to get new ones! Better yet, get few extras so you don’t have to always be troubled if you need to replace you toothbrush but haven’t got a new one yet.

Old towels

There’s really no need for more than two or three big bath towels per person and few extras for quest (at least according to Martha Stewart). You don’t have to throw everything out as you can re-purpose the towels by cutting them into cleaning clothes.

Reorganizing Small Multipurpose Bathroom Part 2

Daily use – easy reach

We have been moving things this and that way in the bathroom and now stuff seems to have found their right places. We started by thinking long and hard what do we need and use most often and what needs to by easy reach.

With that in mind we moved our toilet papers on the lowest shelf with the cleaning and laundry supplies. Those are the ones we use almost daily or at least weekly. The highest shelves hold extra items like one box of more toilet paper, fill up bottles of soap and shampoo etc.

Boxed by use

Because we don’t have cupboards we use boxes to sort out our items so they are protected by dust and easier to move around while cleaning or searching something. Cleaning supplies into one box, hygiene products to the other, fill ups and extras into third and so forth. We have so called medicine cabinet above our sink which holds toothbrushes, hair products, deodorants, facial creams and other daily used cosmetics.

Organization <3 magnets

The best Pinterest find for our bathroom organization was to use small magnets as a way to attach tweezers and other small metallic items to the medicine cabinet’s metallic wall. This way you’ll never lose them into a never ending pouches or drawers. Magnets are also great for many other things, we use them to hold laundry bags for delicates on the side of the washing machine and sort out other small odds and ends away from the table tops.

Reorganizing Small Multipurpose Bathroom Part 2
Our medicine cabinet holds our daily essentials like toothbrushes and deodorants. And here you can see the super handy magnet storage system holding tweezers and nail clippers. Too neat!

 

The best part? Decorating!

Decorating the small space is important along the organization. We don’t get natural light into our bathroom, so we have been making our decorating decision with that in mind. Most of the bathrooms have few ”fixed” colours and materials. It’s good to start with those and try to match things to them and perhaps bring one or two elements more.

  • white porcelain in sink/tub/toilet
  • shiny metal in shower head/faucet
  • fuzzy fabric of towels

Elements to match

White and shiny is quite easy, we have been taking care that our washing machine is white and not brushed but even and sleek. We also use white enamel box to hold our cleaning supplies. Also our shower curtain is white with vertical stripes. It’s installed close to the ceiling, giving an impression of high room and keep the room as light as possible.

We have used metal in the toilet brush holder and are still searching for new measure spoon for washing powder jar.

Our bathroom carpet is white and grey and the surface is bit similarly fuzzy as terrycloth towels.

 

Materials to add

Other elements are wood and glass. The wood is used mainly in boxes and small drawers which hold assortment of everything from cosmetics to extra toilet paper, also part of our brushes are wooden. The wood gives bit warmth to the otherwise quite hard looking room. Janina has been playing with an idea to use wooden shelves but I’m afraid they would darken the room too much.

Glass we wanted to use because it’s easy to clean and disinfect and it looks light and let’s light shine through it. There’s also something luxurious with glass. At this point the glass is mainly used in jars to hold our hair- and make-up brushes, cotton swaps and washing powder. We have big assortment of different kind of clear glass jars, so it has been easy to use them.

ReorganizingSmall Multipurpose Bathroom Part 2

 

The colour

Our bathroom is coloured mainly with white and grey, plus the wooden brown. Only other colour we have wanted to bring there is tiffany blue. Bring only one colours along with the neutrals but use it freely with the small items. We have been taking care that any new items we buy for the bathroom is either something above (light wood, sleek white, shiny metal) or the turquoise blue: foot rasp, cleaning rags, spray bottle, soap, few towels…

It might seem bit vain and lot’s of useless work to search for items of a specific colour but that’s the way to achieve the glossy magazine-like feeling. If you look pictures till example at Martha Stewart, you can see how rooms are very colour coordinated, even the cleaning supplies. They are staged pictures, but that only means you have to stage a bit at home too by coordinating things in your decorating.

Eye tends to search the similarities in the room were they either shapes or colours and even thought you or your guests might not notice them intentionally, somewhere inside your brains you enjoy the harmony of one colour. This way you can also make things like cleaning supplies as a part of decoration. That’s important to us, because as we have mentioned, our bathroom serves as a laundry room, master bathroom and quest bathroom at the same time. Cleaning supplies are better be easy to the eyes so that we don’t have to hide them when we have visitors.

 

So some stuff in our multipurpose bathroom is getting on the right places. Our eternal mission is to fix the laundry space problems and that is probably something we are going to tackle next. Stay tuned and if you have some killer ideas then why not to share those with us on the comments below!

Cheers,

Iida and Janina

Reorganizing Small Multipurpose Bathroom Part 2

 

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