Kon Mari Organizing Project #4: Small Bath Storage & Organization

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I have three kids sharing a small bathroom, if that's not bad enough, two of them are tween girls.  I chalk this bath up to “things you don't think about when you buy your house!”  With the layout of the bath being sandwiched between a hall and a staircase, there is no expanding it, so with that said, we did a redo of it several years ago to update fixtures, flooring and pretty it up.  Because at that time (before our basement redo), it was also the only guest bath!

So it may be pretty, but it still is not functional.  With one medicine cabinet and one vanity, it really needed help organizing, so in that vain, it was this month's Kon Mari project.

Here are the other Kon Mari projects I've tackled so far in case you missed them.

Paper/   Drawers/  Refrigerator

Kon Mari organizing was developed my Marie Kondo and she illustrates the concept in her book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. I've been working my way through the categories and one of the last categories is Komono which encompasses all your miscellaneous and household items such as DVD's, electronics, makeup, craft supplies, hobby materials etc.  I decided to tackle the kid's bathroom as one of my Komono projects.

Small Bath Storage & Organization

Here are the tragic before pictures.

Yikes.  I need to find out why half my daughter's wardrobe is under there.  🙁

I started by clearing everything out. Marie Kondo emphasizes the importance of sorting by categories.  This way, you see exactly what you have and when you have duplicates, it is obvious.

Some of the items under the sink which were not necessary were relocated to a hall linen closet.

With what was left, I sorted and devised a strategy of organizing the items better.

Using juice jars, I filled them with necessities like cotton swabs, bandaids, rubber bands for braces, and floss sticks which were easy to grab when needed.

Under the sink, I maximized storage by purchasing these clear stackable bins.  Due to the pipes under the sink, these narrow bins worked best because they could be tucked in beside them.  I started with a set of 8.  I decided to give each child 1-2 bins of their own to store the items that they use daily.  The other bins are used for bath toys and extra cosmetic items.

On the other side of the piping, there was room for extra toilet paper rolls, tissue boxes, and folded towels.

For the cabinet, I put the juice glasses on the open shelf and kept the cabinet shelves clear for toothbrushes and hairbrushes.

We haven't hit the stage for curling irons etc. yet, but I think we will need to store those items in their bedrooms and design a vanity area for them when they are ready for that.

My final step in this organizational project was to create labels for each bin.  These came with a handy label holder on the front so I cut paper and used my label maker to make a label for each bin.  I color coded them according to kid, so they would know which one was theirs.

To life feeling like home!

XO,