Bathroom Organization Project

Now that I am expecting, I am starting to look around the house and realize how much needs to get done! I would love to say that I am one of these future mommies who keeps an immaculate 3000 square foot house with lots of storage and great organization and decoration. Unfortunately, we live in a townhouse that is only 1500 square feet and needs some serious work. Plus, dare I say it? I suck at housekeeping. I forget to dust. I don't vacuum nearly as often as I should. Closets start out somewhat organized or spare and then as I buy more and more things, they become disgustingly cluttered and disorganized. It's embarrassing, really. It's also not the kind of thing a woman is supposed to admit, but I have to be honest about where I am to understand where I want to go.

Trust me when I say I've been working on making a lot of improvements to myself in the past several years. Weight loss. Eating right. Exercise. A new career. Getting rid of negative self-talk. Fixing up the house has sort of taken a back seat. Also, we'd been living on my husband's income for several years so there hasn't been a ton of money to put into things like new carpet or fresh paint or storage systems. But now that there's a baby coming, I know we've got to start getting things organized around here. Thank goodness, I have a good career of my own now, but we'll still be on a budget for a while.

First and foremost, we're going to need the space! And better organization and cleanliness means more space all over the house. I decided there's no better time to start than the present. My first project? My bathroom. We have two bathrooms in our house, one in the master bedroom and one in the hallway that has general access. Since we had two, George took the master bathroom (that only has a shower) and I took the hall bath with the tub. Now, looks like I'll be sharing the hall bath with a baby and a someday, a toddler!

Okay, I'm going to share some pictures of my closet and under the sink. It's totally embarrassing because it's just so incredibly messy (easy to just close the door and forget the mess, lol), so please don't judge me! It's awful, I know! Thankfully, I have before and after pictures, and the after is so much better.

Bathroom closet before:

 

And after:

 I got rid of one huge bag of trash. Mostly, it was full of old hair products and lotions that I haven't used in months. I lined the shelves with removable decorative shelf paper. I re-purposed some CD bins I had in my office that weren't being used anymore and the only items I bought were the stackable sets of white bins at the bottom of the closet. Being on a budget, I was happy to find them in sets of 3 for less than $5 a set at Walmart. Each bin has a theme. Cleaning supplies. Bandages. Extra cotton balls. etc. Hopefully now that everything has its own place, it will be easier to keep clean.

Here is the before and after of the space under my sink. Terrible, I know! I've gotten in the habit of just throwing stuff down there. Yuck!

 

But look at it now!

 

I put lined the bottom and the back with the decorative shelf paper. All of my curling brushes and curling irons and straightening iron are all stored in the larger pink container. The white baskets in the center are for my makeup (which is usually strewn all over the counter). I put the makeup I only rarely use but wanted to keep in the bottom bin, and the one on top is full of the makeup and the brushes I use everyday. The basket on the right side is full of odds and ends.  Oh, and by the way, I threw out another large bag of trash from all the shampoos and such under the counter and old makeup I never used anymore. Ouch! It's awful to think about all the things I had just in this one room that I didn't use or need.

And I didn't just work on the closets and sink. I also put up a fresh new shower curtain and liner, new bathmats and cleaned the top of the sink and toilet. I don't like the color of the bathmats, though, so I want to exchange them before I take an overall picture of the bathroom.  

Honestly, I had really been hoping we could afford to buy a brand new house before a baby came, but it just isn't in the cards for us. The townhouse we live in now is one George bought a few years before we met. Since I didn't have any choice in picking it out, I'm not terribly attached to it. Okay, in some ways, I hate it, lol. But it's our home and I want to make it the nicest possible place it can be for our sweet new baby next June. There's a lot of work to do, but I'm going to do my best to take it one small project at a time. However, I have a feeling nine months is not really as long as it sounds!