KonMari Method: Organizing Your Bathroom

In my last KonMari post I talked all about how I organized my family’s clothes by following the KonMari Method. Today I’m going to skip ahead a couple of steps to the Komono (miscellaneous) category and talk about how I organized our bathroom.

If you missed my overview of the KonMari Method, be sure and hop over there and give it a read. As mentioned before, the method involves decluttering and organizing by category in a specific order: 1. Clothing 2. Books 3. Paper 4. Komono (misc.) and 5. Sentimental items.

The reason I decided to skip posting about books and paper is because I don’t have much to show for it! A majority of the books that we own belong to David and he has a deep attachment to them, which is totally ok! Books are his thing, and if he wants to hold on to them that’s fine. I went through my books (a total of like 20 out of hundreds that we own!) and decided to donate most of them to our public library. David donated a few of his as well, but we kept most of them. Because we’re moving soon, they actually ended up getting boxed up, so I don’t have an organization system to show you right now. We plan to build built-in bookcases in our new home, so I’ll be sure to show you then how the book organizing turns out!

As far as papers go, I completely failed on taking any before pictures! I followed Marie’s method of gathering all papers in the house (old bills, forms, warranties, papers from our safe, notes from school, etc.) and made a huge pile in the living room. I spent an afternoon sorting through everything and discarding what wasn’t needed anymore. The only things I kept were important documents and certificates, tax papers from the past few years (all of these are kept in our fireproof safe) and any bills/forms that needed to be addressed. Marie suggests only keeping papers that need to be addressed, and as soon as it’s taken care of, throw it away. I will plan to do a quick post in more detail about the method of discarding books and papers at a later time.

The KonMari Method: Organizing Your Bathroom

On to our bathroom! When I started pulling everything out of our bathroom cabinets and linen closet, I couldn’t believe how bad it had gotten. When you look at clutter day after day, it’s almost as if you don’t even see it anymore. You look past the mess and act as if it doesn’t exist.

Below is a picture of how our bathroom counter would look on a good day:

And this picture is how it looked on the day I decided to “KonMari” our bathroom. This scene was [unfortunately] not uncommon:

This is how it looks now. The only exception is that you’ll typically find my hair straightener on the counter because it has to cool off.

You’ll find a few other before pictures of the cluttered mess we lived in for so long in the photos below. As you can imagine, when everything is this disorganized, it’s sometimes hard to find what you’re looking for. I would get so frustrated digging around in our bathroom drawer and not being able to find something that I knew was in there, I just couldn’t spot it through all of the clutter. Who else has this problem?

Here are a few steps to KonMari-ing your bathroom:

Put everything in a central location

I took EVERYTHING out of my bathroom and put in on the floor in our master bedroom. I took everything out of the cabinets, closet, and actually took the entire drawer out, and then I started going through everything a little at a time.

Collect like items from the rest of the house

You may keep “bathroom” items in other places in the house, so be sure to grab everything and sort through it in one go. For example, there were hair ties, bobby pins, nail polish, etc. in other places in our house, so I grabbed it all.

Sort through one “subcategory” at a time

This way you’re able to see exactly how much you have of each item, then set what you want to keep to the side. For example, go through lotions, make up, hair products, cleaning products, medications and first aid products, etc. all separately. This also helps keep you from feeling overwhelmed. One step at a time!

Organize

Once you have COMPLETELY sorted and discarded, you can start organizing. Take an inventory of what you are keeping and envision how you want to store everything in the space that you have. I created separate piles for each subcategory and tried to figure out what size basket I would need for each. I made a list and then made a quick run to Michaels and to Target to get what I needed. Shoe boxes are the perfect size for storing many items, so I grabbed some photo storage boxes (same size as shoe boxes) from Michaels for $2. I also got a couple of baskets from Target. The white square organizer you see below was from the Target dollar spot!

Our linen closet from top to bottom, left to right:

Beach towels • Small travel bags • Toiletry bags

Sunscreen, bug spray, travel soaps • Feminine hygiene products • Nail polish • Essential oils • Cleaning products

Toilet paper • Dog shampoo, candles • Shampoos and body wash (I’ll explain in a minute) • Bath products (Epsom salts, bath bombs, etc.)

Towels and washcloths (we’re in the process of buying new towels and washcloths, which is why they don’t match!)

Use a hanging door organizer for medications

This is not a suggestion of Marie Kondo. This is actually an idea I got from my friend Erica and it worked out great! I can easily find exactly the medication I’m looking for and it’s so much easier to grab what I need and go, rather than rummage around in a medicine box.

Store your shower products outside of the shower

I know this sounds crazy. Really I do. I thought it was crazy when I read it. But when I started to clean out my shower I realized that she’s right – leaving your bottles in the shower creates soap scum and slime. Below all of our bottles was a ring of mold and the bottom of the bottles were slimy. Our hanging shower organizer was rusty and just plain gross. Shouldn’t our shower/bath be a clean place? It is where we go to clean ourselves.

So I bought into it. I discarded what I didn’t need, Clorox wiped all of our bottles very well, and found a perfectly sized shoe box to store them neatly in the closet. Our shower is now roomier and the soap scum doesn’t build up near as quickly. It took a few times to get used to it, but I think David and I both have made a habit out of grabbing our soaps before we hop in the shower.  I got some suction hooks to hang our loofas on in the shower, because there’s no way to dry them off and store them elsewhere. If you’re seriously considering using the KonMari Method, I suggest giving this a try! If it doesn’t work out for you, that’s fine, I understand it’s not for everybody, but I’m willing to bet you’ll like having a nice, decluttered shower with less scum!

Enjoy!

Now that you’re done, sit back and enjoy your neatly organized space. It’s safe to say that I have a much easier time finding what I need than I did before. The best thing is that it’s SO easy to keep organized. You simply use something and put it right back where it goes. I’m actually pretty proud of us for keeping everything as neat and organized as we have. I think that speaks a lot to this method though. It allows you to create a tidy space that’s easy to live in and keep that way. When everything has a spot, it’s easy to put it back. If you have lots of things living together in the same space, it’s easy to become disorganized and clutter tends to build back up.

What do you think about the KonMari Method? Have you tried it? Would you consider trying it? As a person that’s never been super tidy, I can say that it has worked great! If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask. If you’re interested in reading you can find it on Amazon for about $10!

If you enjoyed this post, you may also like:

The KonMari Method: An Overview
The KonMari Method Part 1: Clothing

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