How do you make the most of your modest-size bathroom with four people in the family? You make it an organized bathroom, of course!
I tell my husband that we only truly need about 10 feet squared to live in… Wherever I go in our house, if my kids are awake, they are in the same 10 square feet!
I think pee-ing with your little ones bouncing around the bathroom is an universal experience for parents. My house is definitely no exception! And since I’m pretty sure our bathroom is about 10 feet squared, I usually have company when I use the facilities!
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Why Do We Keep Our Bathroom Organized?
I’ve been doing a series on how our family organizes our space – we are a family of four, living in a rented apartment about 450 feet square – and I’ve covered our TINY kitchen, my husband’s and my bedroom, and today I’ll talk about our organized bathroom. I’ll also show our kids’ room and living/dining room. So if you are enjoy this series, keep an eye out for those as well.
We have one bathroom, and it is actually the ensuite to our bedroom (our apartment is technically a one-bedroom apartment – we have a storage room/utility room that we use for the girls’ bedroom). Although our bathroom isn’t large, it is perfectly serviceable for us. As long as it doesn’t get cluttered up with unnecessary stuff! Honestly, I just feel like a better human being when I inhabit an organized and tidy space. I think some people are really, really CLEAN people (like, regarding germs), but I mostly try to be a really, really TIDY and ORGANIZED person. (I figure that also helps take care of the germs because cleaning is then a lot easier!)
Our Organized Bathroom Layout:
As I’ve mentioned elsewhere in this series, I’m a big fan of cleared-off surface spaces. So I prioritize keeping my bathroom sink and counter clear, other than the bottle of hand soap. This makes cleaning it and doing the daily wipe-down super easy.
Just inside the bathroom door to the left is our vanity and sink with a diaper pail beside it. Under the sink are two drawers. Our top drawer has my odds and ends on one side (make up bag, hairspray, extra hair ties, moisturizer, etc). On the other side is my husband’s odds and ends (his shaving stuff, contact solution, etc). There’s a small middle section which is where we keep our deodorant.
The bottom drawer has a few essential oil restocks on one side, and rags and wash clothes on the other side.
Just further on from the sink, we have a shower with a glass door. We hang an over-the-door hook on the shower door so we can hang our “bath” from it to dry. The bath is an under-the-bed tray that I put on the bottom of the shower and let the kids splash around in when they are grumpy! When the tray is dry, we typically keep it under our bed just outside the bathroom door.
Along the back wall of the bathroom, there is a heated towel rack. This seems like an absolute luxury to my American self, but here in New Zealand it is pretty common. We keep all of our towels on it – the girls’ hooded towels hang from the sides, and Gabe’s and mine on the rack. The heated bars serve as an excellent place to dry something overnight if needed.
And in the back corner of the bathroom is our toilet and a window. A basket secured with command hooks houses a few extra toilet paper rolls next to the toilet in easy reach.
On the back of the door into the bathroom we have some over-the-door-hooks. I have my daughter’s bathrobe hanging there right now, and some foam bath toys in a bag.
Bonus: Bathroom Storage Spot to Help With Organization
We also have a hot-water closet with two sliding doors behind the bathroom door, which provides excellent storage to keep our bathroom organized! On half of the closet and across the top there are shelves which serve as bathroom storage.
Under the shelves, on the floor, we keep our main toilet paper stash. My kids love to help take the toilet paper rolls out of the big packages they come in and carefully stack them into the space. It’s a pretty good parenting win (as long as they don’t start unraveling the rolls) because they do the storing for me, and it keeps them occupied and makes them feel like they’re helping!
The next shelf up is our towels (rolled) and our spare bed linens (also rolled).
The next shelf up has our grab-everyday kind of stuff I didn’t want the kids to be able to reach. This is where I keep my bobbi pins, scrunchy, and the jewelry I use most frequently. We also have a spare bar of soap, my husband’s electric razor, my barber scissors and comb, spare shampoo, etc.
I usually keep the next shelf up free of any permanent items and cycle our folded laundry through here in the winter. If we keep it there for 24-48 hours, it is usually dry enough to be put away. The heat from the hot water heater can help dry everything. I also keep laundry pegs on the wires here so I can clip up my undies, or reusable bamboo breast pads, or period undies (these are my favorite of what I’ve tried!) to dry slightly faster.
Across the top of the closet we have a shelf that holds three baskets. One basket is where we keep our spare pillow cases. The next basket has medicines, sunscreen, and first aid supplies. And the third basket has our more aggressive cleaning supplies. I don’t usually use them, but there were some cleaning supplies that our landlords furnished when we moved in. Since I didn’t want to throw them out, I stashed them up there. I also keep my homemade, non-heavily-chemical’d multi-purpose scrub (which I use on the sink, the shower, and the toilet).
Bathroom Aesthetics Too, Of Course!
And, as a finishing touch, I have some photos in frames above the towel rack.
I also have the words to a Liturgy for Changing Diapers (from this book) just stuck up with sticky tack… Because I use cloth diapers, I spend a fair amount of time in the bathroom spraying off the diapers. I always find it encouraging to read over the liturgy there!
Your Turn:
How do you organize your bathroom? Are there any amazing tricks you’ve used? I generally think a bathroom is pretty standard, but I’d love to know how you have individualized your space. What do you prioritize in a bathroom space? Let me know in the comments below! As always, thanks for sharing your ideas with the rest of the community here. I love collecting ideas from other people and utilizing the ones that resonate with me!
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