Last week we took a break from our physical spaces and decluttered our electronic clutter. This week, it’s time to get back into our physical spaces! We are decluttering our bathrooms!

Now, I don’t know about you, but personal hygeine products, makeup, and hair supplies can get out of control really quickly, but oftentimes I don’t really think to declutter this stuff! But the time has come to finally clean out those drawers and closets!

Bathrooms

• Set up your piles – “keep”, “donate”, “discard”, and “remove”.
• Empty the room – all the drawers, closets, cabinets, and countertops should have nothing in them or on them.
• Remove everything that does not belong in the bathroom.
• Give the room a very thorough cleaning! The bathroom can be the dirtiest room in the home, so you want to keep it clean and tidy!
• Now comes the editing phase! Go through everything that you pulled out of the bathroom. Get rid of trash and anything that is empty or expired. This includes empty bottles you find in the shower, old or expired makeup, creams, and toothpastes, etc. If you have some really old, thin towels you might want to consider using them as cleaning rags and invest in some thick robe towels. If you have anything that is new, not expired, but you know you aren’t going to use, consider donating it or giving it to a friend you know would use it.
• Now we move on to categorizing! Sort everything that remains in the “keep” pile into categories. Some categories to consider include: makeup, hair care, skin care (face wash, creams, etc.) body care, dental care, extra toiletries, hair accessories, cleaning products, feminine hygiene, towels, pharmacy, etc. There are so many more categories you could use as well.
• Next, we need to set up zones for our categories. Determine where each of your categories will live. Keep in mind workflow and space is important when determining where your zones will be placed.
• Now we need to organize! Now that you’ve determined where each category will live in your bathroom, it’s time to evaluate storage. The bathroom may be the best place to actually implement storage solutions and containers; they tend to not have a lot of storage spaces to separate out the vast array of categories you may have. I have a rotating “caddy” on my side of the sink that houses my skincare bottles and makeup I use on a daily basis. In the closet our 1st shelf is for towels and washcloths. The 2nd shelf has different clear bins for additional skincare, haircare, and body care. The last shelf is for “pharmacy” items and includes soap, Q-tips, cold medicine, bandaids, and a thermometer. If you have multiple people sharing the same bathroom you may want to create separate storage containers or spaces for each person. Determine what you need for storage and assemple your zones!
• Make sure to dispose of your “discard” pile. Anything in the “remove” pile should be redistributed to the correct rooms or areas. Make sure you immediately give away anything in your “donate” pile. Lastly, you need to evaluate anything that you put into storage a month ago. If you haven’t needed it, it’s time to get rid of it. If you have needed anything, you’ve probably already dug it out. Now is not the time to dig through your storage box again.

Tips

• If at any point you get overwhelmed and want to give up, walk away from the challenge and do something fun and entertaining for awhile. Clutter can easily become overwhelming, and sometimes it looks worse before it gets better. Just chip away at it a little bit at a time and come back with fresh eyes and renewed energy.
• Labeling containers is a great way to help family members identify the correct zones to put their items in, especially if the categories aren’t immediately recognizable!
• Enlist the help of others in the household – whether that be help with cleaning and decluttering or cooking dinner and doing other chores to lighten the workload.

The Sweep

You may want to forget about the daily sweep, because some nights might be just too exhausting, but remember why you joined this challenge. You wanted to create more functional spaces and establish better habits and routines so you never end up with an overwhelming amount of clutter again. That means we need to evaluate the spaces we’ve already “refreshed”. This includes the laundry room, the mudroom, drop zones, the office area, the kitchen, the pantry, and your electronic clutter.

Before bed or at the most convenient time for you, go to your refreshed rooms with a basket. Look around the room and put anything that does not belong in the room in your basket. Take care of anything that is out of place. Go through the house with your basket and putting the items that don’t belong back in their proper place. Clean anything that looks physically dirty. Remember your family is there to help you as well.

This is also a good time to evaluate the effectiveness of your systems in real time as you may notice different trends. Does it still look as good as it did when you completed that space? Do you find that there things out of place or items that don’t belong regularly? Why might that be? Determine what is and isn’t working and make small adjustments to your system as you see fit. Continue to evaluate those changes each night as you go through the house.

Until next week!