spa aromatherapy with gerbera flowers essential oil brush

The bathroom is probably the most used room or rooms in your home. Bathrooms will typically contain all the items you need for personal care. They can yield a lot of traffic throughout the course of the day, but morning routines typically start in the bathroom. That is, after you put on the coffee.

It’s essential that everyone has a morning routine. They keep us on track to get us where we need to be on time. Creating a routine takes some thought, practice, and tweaking along the way. You need to have the tools where you get ready to keep on the schedule of your routine. So, the bathroom needs to be organized for your morning routine to be effective.

The size of your bathroom and storage space will dictate how and where you store your personal care items. Linen closets are wonderful storage containers for towels, linens, as an overflow of personal care items and possibly cleaning supplies. If you have one, it may be inside your bathroom or in the hall near to your bathroom.

The first step in any organizing project is to sort all of the items in the room into broad categories. Put like items together that make sense to you. The list below is typical of the items found in most bathrooms. Store all the items in one category in the same area – the same shelf, or container if possible.

• First Aid – Bandages, alcohol, tweezers, thermometer etc.

• Medications – Prescriptions & OTC (over the counter).

• Toiletries – Shampoo, conditioner, bar soap, body wash, lotions, bubble bath, etc.

• Hair Styling Tools – Hairdryer, curling/flat iron, brushes, etc.

• Nail Care – Clippers, polish, polish remover, file, etc.

• Cosmetics – Mascara, blush, foundation, etc.

• Paper Products – Toilet paper, Q-tips, cotton balls, Kleenex, etc.

• Cleaning Products – Toilet bowl cleaner & brush, rubber gloves, sponges, etc.

After you have all your items sorted, do a thorough purging. Look for broken tools, expired medications and empty products for a quick toss. Items that don’t really belong in the bathroom need to be relocated to their real homes. For multiples of one item, ask yourself if you really need more than 1 or 2 of this item, and discard the excess. The remaining items are your ‘keepers’.

Now that you purged the contents of your bathroom, you should have fewer items to work with. Look at your items; then think about how you use them, and use the tips below to setup your solutions.

• Keep the frequently used items at your finger tips. Less frequently used items can be stored up higher or in the back of a cabinet or closet.

• Use long, narrow, see through bins to corral smaller items, such as nail scissors, tweezers, nail files, and combs. They can also be used as drawer dividers for q-tips, cotton balls, cosmetics, shaving or tooth care items.

• If space is limited, go vertical. Install shelves or cabinets, or use over the door pocket organizers. You can also install a café curtain rod on the wall, attach ‘S’ hooks and hang colorful little buckets for those small items such as toothpaste, tooth brushes, cosmetics & brushes, etc.

• Use the back of cabinet doors for storage. Install a magnetic strip to the back of the medicine cabinet door to hang small metal tools. Attaching pvc pipes to the back of a cabinet door works well to hold hairdryers and curling irons.

• Use slide out double tiered shelves under the cabinet to organize cleaning supplies that you use in the bathroom.

• As mentioned above, linen closets can hold bed linens, towels, heating pads, and as an over flow for supplies. Labeling containers and shelves will help all family members know where to return items after they use them.