Scenes From a Professional Organizer's Home: My Bathroom

Last week I gave you a peek at my kitchen. Bathrooms can also pose organizing challenges, often due to limited storage space, so I thought we'd focus on that this week. When we moved into our condo, our bathroom storage was limited to a small under-sink cabinet (pictured), a 3-door mirrored medicine cabinet and a single towel bar. To maximize storage space, I outfitted the under-sink cabinet with these mesh drawers from The Containers Store. They hold smaller items like travel toiletries and medicine/first aid items. Larger items like cleaning supplies can still fit alongside the drawers. We also installed a wall-mounted cabinet like this one (but with frosted doors) to hold less frequently used items and extra stock, while the most frequently used items are stored in the medicine cabinet - my items on the left, my husband's on the right and shared items in the middle. We added towel hooks and rings for everyday towels and I keep guest towels folded on top of the wall cabinet and extra TP in a decorative canister on the floor. If I had drawers in the bathroom - maybe you do - I would use simple drawer dividers and keep small items like Qtips, cotton balls, etc. in there. Our space is limited, so I've chosen to keep makeup and hair items out of the bathroom for the most part - I have plenty of space for these and a good mirror in our bedroom.

Here are my top tips for keeping your bathroom organized:

1) Know how much 'inventory' you can store, and don't buy more than that - even if it's on sale!! True story - when we first got our Costco membership, we made a classic rookie mistake and bought the 24 pack of toilet paper. No surprise, we really didn't have the room to store it - we had rolls everywhere - even in the bedroom TV cabinet. For me, the 'benefit' of not having to buy TP for a year did not outweigh the clutter it created in our small apartment - lesson learned!

2) Regularly weed out expired medicines, make-up and items you aren't using. Medicine cabinets and under-sink storage, while small spaces, have a way of becoming black holes for things like travel toiletries, hair products, product samples, etc. Don't let them take up valuable real estate in your bathroom.

3) Keep like items together for easy access. If your mornings are like mine, every minute counts! Streamline your getting ready routine by grouping similar items together. Or you could use my strategy of grouping items by 'user' - all of my items are on one side of the medicine cabinet so I don't have to open multiple cabinets to get what I need.

While bathrooms are typically a small part of your home, an organized bathroom can have a huge impact on your daily routine. Try out the above tips and tell us your ideas for making your bathroom an organized oasis!