I’m not going to fight my nature on this one… I like clear surfaces. Even more than organization sometimes, I love seeing a clear counter.
The top two places this is important is in the kitchen and bathroom for one simple reason: dirt. In the kitchen pieces of food stuck to things is just gross and in the bathroom you have the unholy trinity of soap, hair and makeup residue.
So are you ready for the before pics?
not so much surface space
This is what I mean by gross residue:
ewww
And the space between the bathtub and the counter became a magnet for trash:
see? soap residue is nasty
I should mention I did most of this cleaning while waiting for Ikea to deliver the bedroom furniture (shown assembled in this post). First everything came off the counter so I could scrub it down, Windex the mirror and sort out the make-up, lotions, medicine and all kinds of bathroomy stuff. I added the small trash can between the bathtub and counter and picked up a new (larger one) for the far side.
Here’s the after:
The two bath mats were $11 at Ross
Mostly I just picked up the trash and swept, putting things away in the drawers or cabinet (the white door on the far right of this pic)
and the (clean!) counter:
see all the counter space?
One of the first suggestions I made was using a nifty corner caddy in the bathtub to store a portion of the LUSH collection. Lower baskets are great for a bath while the taller ones are within reach for showers.
Shower Caddy for $25 at Target
I picked up the tension rod at Target and although it shows 96-100″ and I had only 69″ you can easily leave out one length of pole to get the right height. Fun fact: I assembled this while watching Saved By the Bell on Netflix streaming.
The rest of the bathroom was just messy, a recently departed shape shifting cat had left behind bowls and toys and litter and food, most of which was still in the bathroom. Such feline accessories went into the storage area of the laundry room making space for a great spinning towel holder:
Found at a quirky thrift store for $20
The makeup from the counter went into the first drawer:
while you can still see all kinds of makeup it's easy to hide too
And the counter top is used for hair supplies, toothbrushes and the turn style for bottles:
using the yellow dishes I brought from CA
I scored this one for $18 at a Phoenix thrift store and even found a smaller one for the counter top:
$15 smaller counter top organizer
The cabinet behind the door was great for storing the (immense) LUSH collection. BFF already had the colander but it needed to be cleaned up a bit. The tins in the back (on the bottom shelf) have LUSH soaps and bath bombs:
still room for storage
This tray is great for smaller items to ensure they don’t fall through the shelving:
$10 at Ross. And it's blue.
There you have it! The bathroom redo which costs all of $84 and a good amount of elbow grease. If you already have towel storage or a bathroom caddy then it should cost even less!
