Cut The Clutter and
Stow The Stuff
The Q.U.I.C.K. Way to Bring Lasting Order to Household Chaos
Edited by Lori Baird
 Envision yourself relaxing in a bubble bath after a hectic workday that was compounded by a bumper-to-bumper commute home. Now, picture yourself wrapped in a warm, freshly scented towel just plucked from a dryer. Soothing images, right?
Our bedrooms provide us with a soothing place to sleep, our kitchens take care of our taste buds, and our living rooms cater to our need to be entertained. But above all other rooms in the house, the bathroom is an oasis of comfort. So how is it that the most soothing—and smallest—spot in the whole house can fill up with so much stuff so quickly? Where did all these towels come from? Why are there 14 bottles of shampoo in the shower? And what are bottles of multivitamins circa 1986 doing on the top shelf of the medicine cabinet?!
Sound a little too familiar? When it comes to organizing bathrooms—and laundry areas—there’s no need to dash your hopes down the drain. In fact, this chapter is loaded with clutter-cutting tips from top experts (and some ingenious everyday folks) to help you succeed.
Marshalling Your Forces
Before you empty a single drawer or pluck an item off the shelf, devote some time to surveying your bathroom and laundry areas. Like any good general, you need a battle plan before you blitz-clean these areas of your home.
Look at these rooms as if you were seeing them for the very first time. Look up, look down, look under, look all around. Sketch out the layout of the bathroom on a piece of paper. Indicate the location of existing shelves, cabinets, and other storage areas, suggests Karla Jones, a professional organizer from San Mateo, California, who helps homeowners and corporations plow through the chaos created by clutter.
Get the kids Involved. If you have preteen children, turn cleaning and organizing into a fun contest, suggests Maria Gracia, founder of Get Organized Now!, a professional organizing company in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
“The younger the child, the more enticing games will be,” says Maria. “Before dinner, try playing the Roundup Game. In it, your kids run around for 15 minutes putting things away. You can designate the bathroom one night. If they beat the clock—for example, finish neatening the whole room in under 15 minutes—reward them with a special batch of cookies or the chance to spend an extra 30 minutes before bedtime watching a favorite video or being read a favorite story.”
Another game is called Erase the Evidence. “Your child spends 5 minutes cleaning up an area of the house so that no one is able to tell what was there before,” says Maria. Your kids have erased the evidence!
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Farm out the kids. If you have very young children, seriously consider taking on the bathroom when they’re not underfoot. “Don’t try to clean and organize and ‘mother’ at the same time,” says Margaret Dasso, co-owner of The Clean Sweep, a housekeeping agency in Lafayette, California. “Arrange in advance to have your children stay with a sitter, a friend, or a relative. Or have your spouse take the kids to the park or some other outing so you can clean and organize in peace.”
Know your monetary limits. Major bathroom renovations and additions can be very pricey. So unless you scratch off a high paying lottery ticket or gain some windfall of cash, chances are good that you'll need to work with the bathroom you have. Accept, even embrace, this reality. That way, you can focus fully on how to fine-tune the room and not be distracted by daydreaming about your fantasy bathroom: one as big as a bedroom, complete with a whirlpool, a self-cleaning separate shower stall, and endless counter space.
Banish Clutter from the Bathroom
Bathrooms are often the final frontier when it comes to household organizing. It’s easy to shove things into drawers or toss them into the deep cabinet under the sink and forget about them. But before you know it, there’s a mountain of tiny mouthwash bottles, a pile of half-used toothpaste tubes, and far too many outdated makeup items swallowing up space in your bathroom.
“Make an appointment with yourself and put it on the calendar,” says Karla Jones. “Tell yourself that on Saturday morning you will tackle the downstairs bathroom. Pull everything out of the cabinets and drawers, because too often, items have lived in these places for far too long. I had one client who still had a can of starch from the 1970s.” Here are some ways to keep that from happening to you.
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OUT-OF-THE-BOX IDEAS
Turn Clutter Into Creativity
AS A FORMER KINDERGARTEN teacher and now a professional creativity expert, Courtney Watkins hates to see items go to waste. However, that doesn’t mean she’s a fan of clutter. In fact, Courtney, who lives in Los Angeles, California, thrives on helping families turn scraps and odds and ends into one-of-a-kind creations. She has been called “the Mary Poppins of the New Millennium” by Donny Osmond of the former Donny and Marie daytime talk show.
As you unearth spare strands of dental floss, odd buttons, old pantyhose, and other items in your bathroom cleaning binge, Courtney encourages you to use those materials to boost your child’s creative powers. “I think I have the most fun cleaning and organizing when I look at my collection of things and say, ‘What else can this be?” says Courtney. “Playing the game of What Else, you push that muscle of creativity and ingenuity both in your child and in you.”
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Make a clean sweep. Once your bathroom is devoid of all items, take this rare opportunity to give it a ceiling-to-floor scrubbing. That includes dusting the light bulbs! But start with your vacuum cleaner, not a sponge or mop. “If you first run the vacuum across dry surfaces, you will be able to remove hair and other dirt,” says Margaret Dasso. “Then, follow up with your soapy sponge and floor mop.” Be sure to aim your vacuum nozzle into the crevices and deep corners of your cabinet drawers to suck out trapped hair, makeup powder, and other debris.
Wax off residue. You can remove the soapy residue on shower tile and glass doors easily if you turn to a surprising cleaning ally: lemon oil furniture polish. “Don’t laugh until you try it,” says Margaret. “Wipe on the lemon oil with a clean soft rag and let it work awhile. Then polish the tile with a dry cloth.” You’ll also save time and elbow grease the next time the tile needs cleaning, because the furniture polish leaves a slight film that acts as a protective barrier against future soapy buildup.
Flush out stubborn stains. If your toilet bowl doesn’t come clean with regular cleaning, Margaret has a solution that you can really sink your teeth into: Toss two or three denture-cleaning tablets into the bowl. Let them fizzle fully before you flush.
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CLUTTER CRUSADERS
Sailing to Success
FOR LA Doris “SAM” HEINLY and her husband, Daryl, home sweet home is a 48-foot sailboat docked at the Balboa Peninsula in Newport Beach, California. That’s 48 feet from bow to stern. During the week, Daryl is the chief executive officer for an electronics firm and Sam works as the Memories in the Making coordinator for the Orange County Chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association. But weekday nights and weekends find the couple at the helm of their comfy and cozy boat, aptly named Diversion.
Sam and Daryl could easily live in a spacious home with multiple bathrooms, and they have during their 30-year marriage. But they purposely picked the boating life because it gives them the freedom and flexibility to set sail and feel the ocean breeze whenever they like. Sam and Daryl are both nearing 60, and their goal is to take a 3-year sailing excursion to Mexico, through the Panama Canal, the Caribbean, and beyond once they retire. For now, ship living is keeping them shipshape. Their bathroom (known as a “head” in sailor jargon) is basically a small closet the size of a phone booth equipped with a shower stall, a toilet, a sink basin, and a little shelving.
The Heinlys have learned a valuable clutter secret: Don’t keep duplicates or triplicates of items. Those two-for-one bargains can produce more than you bargain for, stealing precious space. Sam and Daryl have made use of the vertical space in their shower stall by gluing on a three-in-one dispenser that contains shampoo, conditioner, and liquid body soap. “When we lived in a house with lots of space, we were forever keeping things that we didn’t ever use. All they did was take up space in our cupboards and shelves,” says Sam. “I think living on the boat has made us smarter about the use of space. We feel less encumbered.”
When friends want to give the Heinlys gifts for special occasions, they diplomatically request selections that won’t take up space they don’t have. “We have our friends and family ‘trained’ when it comes to gift-giving,” says Sam with a chuckle. “We ask them to give us only things that we can consume. Gift certificates to dinners or spas are especially appreciated.”
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