First things first, gather your supplies. When doing any kind of organization project have the following supplies on hand:
- trash bag(s)
- donation or yard sale box
- all purpose cleaner (or appropriate cleaner for the task at hand)
For this particular project, I also purchased some drawer liner from the Dollar Tree to re-line the drawers and finally line the bottom of the bathroom cabinets. I tried to use what I had for storage, but I did purchase some bins from the Dollar Tree to help me container certain things.
Depending on your project and how much time you have, I recommend completely emptying the space. I was doing three cabinets and three drawers. I knew I had naptime to get this project done. If I didn't feel like I could do it all at once, the other option would be to do one cabinet or drawer at a time. For me, I wanted everything out, so I could put things back in their proper place right away!
Now, I am going to show you some really terrible before pictures. Our cabinets and drawers had not been cleaned out or organized for about a year, so the mess is really bad.
This is the medicine cabinet. All the medications were moved to a locked cabinet in the kitchen away from the stove. Did you know you are not supposed to store medicine in the bathroom? Here is a link I found on why and the proper way to store medicine: John Hopkins: Prescription Drug Alert.
This is my bathroom cabinet. It is really bad I know. I had gotten into the habit of just throwing things back in there!
This is my husband's bathroom cabinet. It also housed extra first aid supplies.
At this point, I emptied the cabinets and drawers onto the floor. I tried to group like items together as I went. I then gave everything a good vacuuming and scrub. Finally, I lined each drawer and the bottom of the cabinets with this fun green and white floral print from Dollar Tree.
Now, onto the fun part. Putting it all back. I started by throwing away any empty bottles or expired/old items that I had pulled out. (Why the empties find their way back in there I will never know!)
For the medicine cabinet, I was able to put all my face products, body sprays, lotions and my diffuser supplies in there. The body sprays and lotions used to be in a basket on the back of the toilet, but I am so happy to have them behind closed doors where they will not collect dust and make the bathroom look so cluttered!
In my cabinet, I added a green basket from Dollar Tree to house all my hair appliances - blow dryer, flat iron, curling iron. It was a tall basket, so I could stand them up in it in the corner. I got rid of one set of small drawers that was in there and combined everything left into the larger unit. The top two drawers hold feminine products and the bottom drawer has extra hair stuff in it, like hairbands, headbands and large clips. The basket on top of the drawer holds hair supplies and clips. I keep my make up in two small bags you see in front. The little paisley one has the make up I use every day and the grey one has extra items I don't use all the time. I have my face wipes right up front so I remember to wash my face at night.
Command Hooks are my friend! I used a larger one to hang on the side of the inner cabinet to hang up my stretchy headbands. The clear hooks on the back of the door now house bracelets and necklaces. I had all the bracelets shoved in the small drawers before and never wore them. Now I will see my fun jewelry every day and may be more inclined to actually wear it! Any time your are organizing, check out your vertical space. There is only so much real estate you can use to put things on your shelves and in your drawers. But, often you can hang items on the wall or on the back of the cabinet door to utilize that empty space.
My husband's cabinet was pretty easy. He really doesn't require that much stuff. I put all his personal items in the white basket. The blue basket holds extra first aid supplies. Our boo boo box fits right beside it and the full first aid kit that we take when we go camping, etc. fits nicely behind.
When I cleared out the medicine cabinet, I had all these boxes of bandaids and medicines for fixing cuts and scrapes. I used a tackle box and removed some of the dividers to fit everything inside. Now, if anyone gets a minor cut or scrape I can get it fixed really quickly!
My husband's drawer already had a basket for all his shaving supplies. I added a basket for our tooth cleaning supplies we share, and neatly placed everything else back in there.
My drawer really didn't need that much in it after I weeded through all the junk that was in there. I ended up having some essentials in there, plus my hair brushes and combs and my small hair clips. I store the small hair clips in the purple and pink box (that I think I have had since high school, but it works!).
I put all the extra supplies we have in the bottom drawer.
In August last year, I showed how I added a wire shelf to the top of my closet to utilize wasted space. I am a couponer and I get a lot of free or very low cost personal care items. I store them on the top shelf of my closet. Having the bottles on the wire shelf was not working because they were always falling over. So, I purchased some blue buckets from the Dollar Tree to house all those items.
I lucked out because the four baskets fit across the shelf perfectly, but I recommend measuring before you buy any type of storage. Otherwise you will end up with a garage full of unused storage containers that just didn't fit the space you have!
Lastly, the medicine got moved to a locked pantry cabinet in our kitchen. It is much nicer to pull things out of the bins than reaching into the medicine cabinet and hoping nothing falls on your head or into the toilet. Plus, we had medicine in several places in our house and now it is all in one spot.
I ended up having a large bag filled with trash and a small box of items to be donated. Now, we can easily find what we are looking for and only have items we actually use in the space. And the best part is I spent under $10 on the whole project (not counting the bins for the medicine which I had already purchased).
Have you organized any spaces lately? I would love to hear about it!
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