Four Week "Wait-No-More" Organizing Challenge! Week 3 - Master Bathroom Organization Plan

Welcome to Week Three of the "Wait-No-More" Organizing Challenge. To recap, I am focusing on four main areas of our life that need a lot of organizational help. Instead of biting off more than I can chew all at once (and subsequently becoming quite overwhelmed), I am tackling one space each week.

• Time Management
• Automobiles
• Master Bathroom
• Master Bedroom Closet

And many of you are joining in and working on a few of your own spaces, which I totally love! For this week's organizational challenge, I am focusing on our master bathroom.

We haven't done anything cosmetically to our bathroom since installing it about 8-9 years ago.  It is beginning to show signs of wear and love, and we don't have any plans on doing a major bathroom renovation in the near future.  But something needed to be done now.  Being that it is so uninspired and dated, I have completely let it fall to the wayside.  The counters have become magnets to clutter, the cabinet is a dumping ground for unused toiletries and each wall is covered in small storage solutions, yet we don't properly use any of them.

The view above isn't awful, it could be worse considering the traffic this bathroom receives.  But a closer look would show you empty bottles in the shower, random Lego bits on the hamper, miscellaneous items sitting on top of the hand towel holder, tub toys on the floor and a slew of random toiletries.  Then, you turn to the sink and counter area and it gets so much worse.  I suddenly feel very naked and afraid.

Sorry for the bad photos, this bathroom has always been problematic to photograph due to the lack of natural light.  This side of the bathroom is just a cluster of nonsense.  Toiletries I use daily are piled near the sink, I have no room to store the towel warmer I was gifted for Christmas, and the cabinet holds items that I only use on occasion, if at all.  Sure, my small jars of bath salts are pretty and I love decorative soaps, but are they really necessary to keep if I don't ever use them?  I don't even know what is in two out of the three cabinet drawers.  And the small shelf above the toilet, although cute, doesn't hold anything of importance.

As I mentioned, the bathroom is tired and dated and although this challenge is more about getting high traffic areas of our life back to a happy place, I decided to take on a little extra this week.  Nothing major, just a little refresh to keep me excited to maintain the space and motivate me to bring back some order.  

But first, the plan of attack.

There are some things we have implemented that are working:

• A place for dirty clothing
• His & Hers toiletry bins
• Cleaning products under the sink
• Hooks on the back of the door
• Keeping toiletries pre-packed for travel

And a lot that is not:

• Countertop clutter
• Makeup storage
• Hair accessory storage (do bobby pins reproduce while we sleep?)
• Too many unused toiletries
• Too many unused storage options
• Laziness - we are not always great about putting things back where they belong
• Gross grout

What is it about toiletries?  I was having a convo with a friend about them the other day.  Instead of trying something new and then not loving it and letting it sit in a cabinet or drawer for a few years because I feel too yucky about tossing it out, why not just stick with the products I love time and time again?  Darn marketing, I must be a sucker for it! 

For this organizing challenge, just like all others, I completely emptied the space.

Like 100% emptied it.  I sorted everything into my Keep, Toss, Donate & Sell bins.  Any toiletries that were newer and over half full, I set aside to see if any friends or family would be interested in them.  I ultimately purged over half of the belongings in the bathroom and was left with a single bin of items to keep.

After I wiped everything down, the bathroom was already in much better shape.  But I was ready to freshen things up a bit more, so I reached for a color I had previously tested on the walls for our living room/kitchen, and painted the entire bathroom a coat of Sea Salt by Sherwin Williams.  So pretty!

I actually quite loved the color before, but it was always hard to decorate around and felt a little bit dark for the windowless space.  In fact, it almost felt like a college student's bathroom, not a space for two grown adults.  The new color is essentially a lighter version, and one coat later the room already felt much larger and much more soothing.  Definitely worth the few hours of my time.

I am amped up and ready to start putting things back and organizing the heck out of this bathroom, but first I have to address the floors and grout.  The last time I cleaned it, it looked amazing for a good month before it started to show wear again.  I would never recommend white grout for a bathroom floor.  Especially white, unsealed grout. 

So today I am back to scrubbing trim and grout, caulking in some bad spots near the shower and then using some grout renew and sealer to fix things up a bit.  I have been wanting to do this for well over a year, so no better time to just get it done while the bathroom is emptied out.  I will be sure to share my thoughts on the process as I have read a few mixed reviews.

Once the floor is done, then I have a few small projects up my sleeves and a lot of organizing ahead of me.  Let the fun begin!

You can find all of the challenge details in this post here, and also download some FREE project planning printables to help you get started!