Decluttering the Bathroom

Time to declutter! Over the months, the bathroom storage gets totally overloaded. We keep adding to it and all those creams, lotions, and personal products start to overflow.

Often several people or even a whole family shares the space and it needs to work for us instead of making us crazy each day. Trying to get ready for school or work is harder when everything is a jumble.

Here are some tips for clearing out the excess and organizing the what you really need. You'll find your morning routine going a lot more smoothly once you organize the bathroom drawers and make better use of what space you have.

So you are here to get some organizing tips and find some storage solutions. Don't feel lonely, there are thousands of people frustrated with their cluttered bathrooms, maybe it is even millions of people.

I have a similar pull-out under my sink. It's amazing how much these hold and you don't have to crawl under there to find it. Just slide out the drawer and everything is right at hand.

It also gives you double the space because before everything was on one level under the sink. With this, you have 2 levels and twice the space.

Cheryl W. advised, "As a beauty professional, my advice would be to empty the contents of the bottles, creams and lotions, right into the trash and throw away. Then rinse out the bottles and put in with your recycling. The tiny bit of cream or lotion that you will be rinsing out should not cause any problems for your septic system. All those types of products are water soluble."

Guidelines for safe swapping

• DON"T trade personal products like lipstick or eyelash thickener. These get contaminated.
• DO swap shampoo or similar products that you've lost interest in. Your friends get to try new products and save money and so do you.

I saw a great suggestion for putting the little soaps, shampoo, conditioner and hand cream into a zipped baggie. Keep a few of these with you in your car. If you see a homeless person, you can give them the bag of useful items. Maybe add a few dollars so they can get some food too.

College students in dorms with shared bathrooms used to put their toiletries in a plastic open tote. This was kept in their room so it was easy to grab when heading for the shower. Everything was together and not forgotten.

This idea can work for families sharing a bathroom. Have each child keep a tote in their room with their bathroom toiletries. When they are getting ready for school each morning, they take their tote to the bathroom and then return it to their room once they are done.

A tube of lipstick, bottle of shampoo and some sunscreen may not seem that costly, but the price of cosmetics and toiletries may be hurting your efforts to balance the budget. Here's how to save money on these daily-use cosmetics and toiletries.

1. Don't buy any more until you assess what you currently have on hand. Rummage under the bathroom sink and other places that you stash such supplies. Get it all out and spread it on the counter.

2. Some of these cosmetics were tried once, then shoved out of sight. There's still plenty left in most of them. Give it another chance. Maybe you'll like that shade of lipstick better this time. Maybe that hand lotion works fine once you get used to the scent.

3. Step3

   Use up the remnants of hand and body lotions that might have thickened up a little too much over time. Just squirt a bit of baby oil into the container and shake it up. Usually, that makes it free-flowing again so you can use it up.

4. Put a shampoo that you really don't like into the laundry room. Use it to take out spots or remove ring-around-the-collar. Those collar rings are caused by body oils, so a shampoo works fine for it.

5. Collect together the usable items that you know you'll never finish. Have a swap with some friends for products they bought but didn't care for. This works for toiletries like bottles of shampoo, sunscreen, and lotions. Do not swap cosmetics that have touched you (eyelash thickener or lipstick). There's too much risk of infection to trade those.

Tips & Warnings

• After doing this, you'll find that you've saved some dollars on cosmetics and toiletries. A side benefit is cleaning out the clutter in the bathroom.