I was walking from the girls rooms, laundry basket resting on my hip, when I saw my husband standing in our bedroom giving me "the look". No, not *that* look, this is a family blog! He was standing near the doorway our bathroom putting on his tie, his brow furrowed, his lips pursed, then his head tilted to the side toward the bathroom. His eyebrows quickly shot upward and nodded his head. I nodded and sheepishly grinned. He didn't have to say anything, I knew exactly what he wanted, we have been married long enough to have conversations without saying a word. With the "conversation" over he went back to tying his tie and I continued my laundry duty.
So, what was "the look" and ensuing conversation about?? The crazy, unorganized state of our stockpile. See, completely PG stuff here kids. I love my house, it is great except one little detail: a serious lack of storage. So I have had to get creative with our storage. Luckily, in our bathroom we do have a reasonable amount which is great for our toiletries stockpile, however, we don't have ANY drawers...it's rough. We had to figure out a good way to organize "stuff". Back in December I had to hijack that storage to hide Santa's gifts for our munchkins. Since then our bathroom had been in complete disarray, I knew it needed organized and knew we needed a better system but didn't know exactly what I wanted to do yet.
Here is a before...don't judge:
and this:
I had decided that stackable drawers would be a good option. But they were a bit too big and $7 a pop which was more than I wanted to spend. I went to my DG and found $1 stackable totes, they were small and clear and a buck...they were my solution. After a bit of cleaning and purging ( I took things we had waaaayyy too much of to our mission). Here is my new system:
and this:
I labeled each tub to make it eaiser to see what went where. I left the tall and easy-to-stand up shampoo, lotion and bodywashes out and just lined them up on the side. This really helped me see what I have on hand too. Since they were way in the back, I hadn't realized that we were down to 3 toothbrushes, one bad sickness could wipe us out! We have enough razors however to last until our girls get married and have kids...seriously!
Here is another look:
Feeling all elated and proud I decided to tackle another area of our bathroom. I felt like this area was always getting "fixed" and always messed up again thanks to the lack of drawers. I am a bit ashamed to even show this picture, it will shatter my image of an organized mom. Cue the scary movie music from Psycho ...here goes:
and this:
Now this was right after Reagan knocked a bunch of things over but whew, that's bad. I bought another of the stackable drawer thingies and got to work. Here is what it looks like now:
and this:
I'm sure one of those organizing companies or pros would think that this is still lacking. But the reality is I'm a busy mom living in a snow dome so I have to shovel, salt and repeat every 2 hours and this is good enough for me. We have been living with this for 2 weeks now and it is still organized...so I think this may work!
My hubby came home and liked it too, he very impressed. He even gave me "the look".... no, again, not *that* look. C'mom people, my mom and Mother-in-law read this blog. It was a "now let's think how we can better organize the building when the 37 feet of snow melts" look.
