Making a Home: Affordable Small Bathroom Organization

Hello!

Here’s the next post in my ‘new homeowner chronicles’ which is getting used to a very different storage situation in my new master bathroom. In my bathroom at my parent’s house, my sister and I shared a bathroom with drawers, shelves, a storage cabinet… there was a lot of room and diverse options for storage. Which was good because I have a problem… and that problem is makeup and skincare products.

Honestly, it wasn’t just that I have way too much makeup (although I do). I also have very, very sensitive and dry skin that for a long time, I was buying lotion, shampoo and different foundations etc etc to try and cover and combat. I still have a ton of difficulty with my skin, but thankfully I’ve found a few things that work now. The hangover of that was way too many products that I couldn’t even use, and stuff everywhere. See below for the sad, sorry “before” picture (sorry, Mom, I know you raised me better):

Thankfully, my mum can be proud of me again because in one quick night (with a run to Walmart, Homesense, the dollar store and some elbow grease) the mess morphed into:

See? Much better, right? You won’t see the three-drawer organizer below in the photos for this post- it was actually a “practical” addition a few days after the fact. While it’s a nice idea to keep everything packed away, in my world that just doesn’t happen in reality. My sister has joked in the past that I like all my things where I can see them. In this case it’s mostly for accessibility, but she may have a point. I use it to keep things like my eyelash curler and other day-to-day items in.

In this little project, I tried to use things that I already had as much as possible. These lidless containers are a great example of that- I bought them at the dollar store years ago, broke the lids over time, but they are given a bit of new life in this application.

You can see here that I used a dollar store wire frame to add a “shelf” of sorts to the space under the sink. Since there wasn’t one installed, this allows me to make better use of the space. You can see plastic baskets and Ikea storage boxes repurposed from other areas of the house in there as well. One thing that also helped clean up the visual image of my bathroom was using my hair product carrier more effectively.You can see the cords are wrapped and everything is tucked away to be inside the door now.

A lot of what needed to happen was just thoughtful corralling of everything that was strewn about. These dollar store vases (one new, one old) and mirrored tray helped accomplish that. My enemy in keeping tidy is not having a space for everything- it starts with just tossing my toothpaste wherever, but then everything else that follows makes me end up just like my before picture. I have those designated spaces now.

I hope this post gives some good ideas for strategies to keep your mess under control- I personally struggle with this so much, so having found this strategy to keep myself under check has helped. In an ideal world I’d reconfigure my storage to have three drawers on the left side of my vanity and two banks of shelves under the sink, but that option is pretty pricey (200+$ range), so with some creativity this frugal solution was born!

Product listing:

Toothbrush holder and soap dispenser: Walmart Canada, not available online, ~$30 (gifted)

Mirrored tray: Homesense, $12

Glass vases: one was free, one was $3 at the Dollar Store

Black three: drawer organizer: Walmart Canada $14.99

Wire box shelf: The Dollar Store, $1 (as part of a two-pack)

“Please do not” print: Actual sign, brought back by a family member from Saudi Arabia in the 90’s

Hair tool caddy- $25 at Marshalls