A Bathroom Built for Business

This bathroom re-organization took a left turn during the initial consultation. The owner of the home is a nurse who works nights. When she isn’t at the hospital taking care of brand-new moms and infants, it’s hard for her to sleep on a normal schedule. So she often wakes up - and stays up - for several hours in the night. Rather than go downstairs to their home office and risk waking up the kids, she often goes into her in-suite bathroom and starts working. Paying bills, reading through mail or working on curriculum (did I mention she also works a second job as a professor? Busy Mama!), she actually gets quite a bit done at night.

Unfortunately, this results in papers, pens and her tablet heaped on the edge of the bathtub, on the counter or on the floor. She needed a system that would work not only for her toiletries, but also for those few office items that end up living in the bathroom for her late-night work sessions. Enter baskets and labels. It sounds simple, but taking the time to separate items into categories and giving them a home can make a huge difference. It allows you the mental space to quickly put items back where they belong without really even thinking about it. Just put the pens and Post-Its back in their basket when you’re done working and they’re waiting for you the next night.

 
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She’s also fortunate enough to have two linen closets, one in the master bath and one in the hallway. She also has helpful teenage children and a husband who take turns doing chores like laundry, but unfortunately they don’t always know which closet to put clean linens in. By taking time to separate out like with like and creating a system for what lives in each closet, putting away clean laundry just got a little easier.

Lastly, she already had a great hair tool organizer to house all her curling irons, but since she mostly uses her straightener daily, this was better stored under the sink opening up some much desired white space on the counters.

This bathroom is now organized to tackle anything life throws at it and I know this busy Mom, Nurse and Professor is handling her business in half the time! Check out more photos below including one of a very cute Golden Doodle helper.

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After

A Tale of 2 Bathrooms

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What started out as a consultation for a pantry, quickly turned into an assignment to organize as many rooms in one house as possible while the family went on a 3-day getaway. Handing me a blank slate like that was invigorating. It allowed me to be creative and use spaces in new ways. Thus the Tale of 2 Bathrooms.

The way their house is designed the master bathroom and upstairs guest bathroom are merely steps apart. In the master bathroom, they have a pedestal sink that’s beautiful to look at, but terrible for organizing. As one attempt to remedy that, the original architect installed floor to ceiling medicine cabinets that are great for storing narrow bottles (and hundreds of travel sized toiletries!), but not great for storing anything large. Those items previously went in the guest bathroom or scattered around the bathtub or floor. For years they had been using both bathrooms interchangeably for storage.

 
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The first step was to separate the items that were actually needed on a day to day basis in the master bathroom with what wasn’t needed as often such as travel size toiletries and backstock items like toothbrushes. The items not needed every day were placed in the guest bathroom and new product and systems were created for only what was needed daily in the master.

 
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Adding two wooden storage units with basket drawers on either side of the pedestal sink instantly added more storage without harming the aesthetic. Placing matching larger white baskets on the bathtub and above the toilet also allowed for storage of larger items that wouldn’t fit in the medicine cabinets. And after removing all unnecessary items and decanting, there was room to grow.

 
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Several months after the project, and I’m still hearing great feedback that they can finally get ready in their own master bathroom! And with all the white baskets, and no visual clutter, it feels like a spa.

See more before/after photos below!

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After

Flamingo Bathroom

Organizing a bathroom for a 5-year old was one of the most fun projects I’ve ever done. This particular little girl loves to collect things - all the things. Whether that’s sea shells, nail polishes, rocks from the garden, pieces of old board games or jewelry, if it means something to her, she wants to save it. She also likes her collections visible and plays with many items daily so simply tucking them away in the back of a drawer wasn’t the answer. Her and her family needed some help implementing systems that would work.

 
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She had also recently re-decorated her bathroom with Flamingos. This made the job that much more fun! While we wanted her bathroom to be well designed in addition to functional, she is only 5 and neither me nor her parents saw the need to spend a fortune on product. Off to the Dollar Tree I went and was so lucky to find not only bins and baskets in a perfect palm tree green to match her flamingo decor, but some flamingo trays to add dimension as well.

I hope you enjoy looking at the photos as much as I enjoyed working on this project!

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