Do you have a small bathroom in your house that you have a hard time organizing and can never find what you are looking for?
For small bathrooms, take advantage of the height of the room and the existing cabinet under the sink. This will leave your bathroom looking clean, organized and inviting.
Keep reading below to find out how you can organize your small bathroom today.
Organize Your Small Bathroom in 11 Simple Steps
Before you touch anything, take a picture so that you can see how it looked before any changes were made. It is amazing to be able to look at the before and after picture and see how much better it actually is!
Step 1: Remove everything from cabinets
As with most organizing projects, trying to limit what is being stored in the room is the best place to start. The less you have to organize and move around, the less time it is going to take. Why keep shuffling around empty hairspray bottles and toothpaste that is done when they could just be thrown away?
Remove everything from existing cabinets, shelves, baskets, whatever you have in your bathroom to currently store everything, so that you can get a good look at what you have.
Step 2: Throw out expired product
Now that everything is out, take a quick look through everything to see if there is anything that you could throw away. Put those items right into the garbage so that they aren’t in the way or accidentally get stored away again.
Pay close attention to lotions, soaps, perfumes, deodorants, sunscreen, etc… to see if they have expired. If they have, just get rid of them.
Are there any products, such as makeup that you used once or twice and didn’t like for whatever reason? Get rid of those as well. If you didn’t like them before, you probably never will.
If you are feeling guilty throwing them away, think of it this way…..the money that you used to buy those items is already spent, so you’re not losing anything by getting rid of them. They are just taking up valuable space.
After you have thrown out what you can, you will be able to see clearly what you are left with.
Step 3: Can anything go elsewhere?
Now that the garbage is gone, see if there is anything that actually belongs somewhere else in the house. This could be extra towels, toilet paper, tools, cleaning products, anything that you have more space somewhere else in the house, other than in your bathroom.
Have a box handy that you can put these items into. You can look through this box later and figure out where those items will go. Right now you are just focusing on the bathroom.
Step 4: Donate
Is there anything that you could donate? If there are extra towels and washcloths in the bathroom that you will never use, you could donate them to Goodwill or other donation locations or take them to an animal shelter.
Animal shelters will gladly take them, even if they are not in great shape! Think about those sweet puppy faces cuddling into your unused towels. 🙂
Have a box available that you can put your donations into immediately. The towels and washcloths that you are taking to the animal shelter can go into a bag for easier transport.
Don’t leave yourself any time to think about keeping these items. You won’t miss them when they are gone, so just let them go and somebody who will actually use them can have them.
Step 5: Under sink storage
Now that you have determined everything that should remain in the bathroom, you will have a better idea of what type of containers you will need to contain everything.
Tip: It may be awhile before your cabinet is empty again, so take advantage of this opportunity and give it a good cleaning before putting anything back in!
If you have a cabinet under your sink, the best options for organizing are:
Small Drawer Container:
a) Buying a small container that has drawers. Just make sure to measure your space so that you know it will fit beside the drain spout. The drain spout often curves out, so it takes out a couple of inches of space where you would be putting the drawer unit.
Label each drawer. The drawers should contain items that are similar to each other.
Example labels for drawers:
Hair products: bobby pins, elastics, hairbrushes
Dental products: toothbrushes, floss, toothpaste
Body care products: moisturizers, q-tips, tweezers, lip gloss
Nail products: nail files, nail polish, clippers
If you have a taller cabinet, you may even be able to fit two 3 drawer units stacked on top of each other.
Stackable Bins:
b) Another option is to buy stackable bins that will fit in the area under your sink and label similarly to the drawer option above. These are not as handy as the drawers, but they can often hold more product. This may work better for you if you have larger items that wouldn’t fit nicely into the small drawers.
Bins:
c) You could buy several individual bins to fit everything but this is not ideal. You would end up having to take bins out and move them around to get to everything. If you choose this option, put items that aren’t used as often in the bins at the back of the cabinet.
I would only recommend using separate bins if you have shelves in the cabinet. Try to find a longer bin that would fit the full depth of the shelves. This way you can just pull the bin out to see what is in there.
A lazy-susan is a great option for larger items like, hair spray, large pump lotion bottles, sunscreen, etc….. Then you can just spin the lazy-susan to see what is at the back of the cabinet!
Make sure whatever you choose is using all of the available space in the cabinet, both the depth and the height.
Step 6: No storage
If you have a pedestal sink, consider buying a pretty storage container that you can put beside the sink to organize the items that you would typically put in the cabinet under your sink.
There are many beautiful options in different materials that would look nice. Either wicker or plastic weaved units with drawers can be found at Walmart and are inexpensive. The drawers can hold many items and you could add a decorative piece to the top to make your bathroom more inviting or put a box of Kleenex on top for everybody to use.
Step 7: Organize drawers
If you already have drawers in your current storage cabinet, you are incredibly lucky! Drawers are the best way to organize any space. Just buy some drawer organizers for the smaller items and everything will be easy to find.
There are small individual bins that you can find at any “Dollar” store or you can use the organizing bins with multiple sections that are typically used in the kitchen to hold utensils.
Step 8: Toilet paper organizing
Toilet paper can quickly take up a lot of space, so that should be stored in a closet somewhere else in the house when possible.
If you want to have some toilet paper in the bathroom so that it’s easy to grab, you can buy separate toilet paper holders which hold 3-4 rolls of toilet paper upright. They are compact enough that they fit nicely beside the toilet.
Here is what I use in our small bathroom:
Step 9: Use height of room
Next, there is a large area above your toilet that could be used for items such as towels, washcloths, extra shampoo and conditioner, etc….
I would recommend using a free-standing over the toilet storage unit that fits around the toilet to use the most possible space. A few excellent examples are below:
If you only need extra storage for towels, you could buy a towel hanger similar to mine below, which can be used to dry used towels and hold clean towels on the top.
Step 10: Organize hair tools
If you usually dry, straighten or curl your hair, there are options to contain those tools and the cables. Rather than leaving them out on your vanity.
There are organizers made of mesh steel that will hold all of your hair styling tools. The organizer can fit into the remaining space in your cabinet under the sink. You can put the hair styling tools directly in there while they are still warm!
The organizer can also be hung on a towel rack, on the wall or can sit on a shelf.
Step 11: Clean and stage
For the final touch, give the rest of the bathroom a good cleaning, hang up some fresh hand towels, spray the room with your favourite scent room spray and then take a look around!
Conclusion
The bathroom now looks organized and beautiful! Don’t forget to take a picture when you are all done and compare your before and after picture. You may not notice a huge difference until you compare the pictures. It really is amazing seeing the progress!
