This is so dumb. Like I’m actually sitting here, 8:22 am with a cup of coffee and the rain dripping on the roof, thinking about how literally dumb this blog post is. But here’s the thing. I want to celebrate the little tiny successes in life because nobody is going to throw me a party because I organized something.
BUT I AM SO PROUD.
Also judge me for all the beauty products, I don’t care. Actually I think your judging is probably super valid. I said I wasn’t bringing samples to our apartment and lo and behold they snuck their way in.
Can I just throw out a non-rhetorical question?
Where do beauty bloggers keep all their stuff?
Anyone else feel me on this???? I watch people unboxing crap and I’m like… what are you gonna do with that? Where are you gonna put it? Like I’ll never throw away a bottle of shampoo because give me enough time and I WILL USE IT. But full sized gels and face masks and stuff? What do they do with it all?
Anyway, I’m not a beauty blogger, I’m just a Birchbox Subscriber and someone who has collected far too many samples of hair products for being a person who blow dries their hair 2xs a month and rarely styles it beyond a bobby pin. But still I keep my little bottles of product to one day use up.
See why the Empties Posts are so important? When I finally use something up, I need to stand on the tallest mountain I can find (which I guess is my blog) and shout it from the mountaintops.
My gosh. This is a really long-winded intro to the actual point of this post.
In our bathroom we have this cabinet that kind of became a catch-all for anything that entered into our bathroom. It was like one giant pile of stuff. I put on my January goals that I wanted to organize some things* and this was one of the things.
I’m reading a book about simplifying life and it challenged the reader to NOT BUY ORGANIZATION STUFF while cleaning out their house because it’s just bringing more stuff in and finding new ways to rearrange/hide the clutter. So I decided that I’d just kind of have to embrace the current state of my bottles of products and still organize with what I had… which was space.
Here, my friends, is the before.
This is the cabinet over the toilet and the cabinet in the bathroom (you can check over here of how we got them). We don’t have counters in our bathroom so this is what we get.
I started with the cabinet above the toilet because it’s one I see every single day. Here’s the before:
and then the after:
We keep out a LOT of our daily products. At some point I might transition this stuff over to cute little baskets or something, but for now I love being able to grab products and be able to see them right away.
Moving on to the big cabinet. Because the door closes, it’s been so easy to just throw stuff in and close the door. and yeah, this is where we’ve decided to keep our candles, lol.
Close up on the top two shelves. The top is candles and paper good overstock. Organized in a really nice way, too. And a shower curtain liner. and other things.
The second shelf is the one that gets used the most often. Spare shampoos, my daily skincare + haircare products, our toothbrushes and toothpaste. Lots of stuff and I had no idea what was all in there.
BEFORE:
AFTER:
I took the candles out of the plastic tub and stacked them. I burn candles ALL OF THE TIME, so when one goes out, it’s easy to grab another one to replace it. Organized the toilet paper and kleenex and such. I COULD get boxes, but I do better seeing everything.
On the second shelf, I took things out of the box and laid them out so I could see them better. I left two baskets in the back – one for often used (but not daily) products, and one for hair products & hair brushes. That little jar is full of Birchbox skin/hair care samples, and the two empty soap bottles is because I was waiting for refills. It’s been so much easier to keep track of things because boxes aren’t hiding them.
The bottom two shelves are towels/washcloths…. catchalls? and then cleaning supplies and hair stylers and boxes of empties and feminine hygiene products.
BEFORE:
AFTER:
Once I found places for the random things in this shelf, it was so much easier to organize. The one thing I’ve changed is that I’ve turned the hand towels around. I prefer to display the folded edges of towels because they look less messy, and looking at this picture helped me see that!
That box has the styling products and various other bathroom related chargers, and then our cleaning supplies were put in the little plastic tub that used to hold the candles. That way we can pull it out and get what we need!
On the other side of the bathroom is the medicine cabinet that keeps our medicines and my makeup. It’s been SO HARD to get organized. I have these little pails but they feel like they never work, and I realized that the clear little tub was KILLING ME, because I’d take something out of the white pail and then throw it in the tub and have to dig it out again.
BEFORE:
AFTER:
In addition to an EXTREME purge of things I don’t need/want, I took the time to organize all of the makeup products. The bottom container has ALL of my face products – brushes and sponges, primers, blush, powder. The top two are divided into eye products and lip products. I put all of the medicine together (spot the Miralax, thanks from when I got my gallbladder taken out).
It’s ACTUALLY been maintainable, too! That’s the biggest thing. I take out the containers one at a time and put everything away before I move on to the next one.
It’s ultra not Pinteresty. One day I might be able to get there, but right now it functions well, I feel less overwhelmed and I can find what I need. I do think that if I could ever pull this off, I’d be on it 1000%… what about y’all?
Anyway y’all I gotta go cross some things off of my January to-do list. See y’all around soon.
