I’m Karen from Washington state, USA.

Do you know any tricks for those of us in older homes with only one bathroom? I have a teenage son and a disabled husband who spends 2 hrs in there each morning. I can’t get up any earlier (5:30am to let the caregiver in).

Karen, here’s what I’d do to organise the time better:

1. Allocate each person set “bathroom time” daily. The fastest person goes first so that the schedule is not thrown off if there are delays
2. Everybody doesn’t have to have their main bathroom time in the mornings. Can someone not do theirs in the evenings?
3. To make the time more efficient, dressing must be done in the bedrooms.
4. Have a bathroom caddy for each person which they bring into and take out of the bathroom when it’s their time. This way the bathroom doesn’t have to store unnecessary things.

Do you have one or more bathrooms family members have to share? How do you get everyone in and out quickly in the mornings?

I thought it would be fun to issue a challenge this week on something relatively easy to do – declutter your bathroom toiletries.

You all know that I have the smallest bathroom in the world so I don’t have enough storage space in there.

I use a drawer inside our bedroom to store excess bathroom toiletries.

This is my decluttered drawer….

and this is what I managed to declutter from the drawer and from the bathroom itself. 11 items

Right, over to you.

Are you up for the challenge? Let me know how many items you manage to declutter.

We recently had a situation where a pipe leading to our geyser burst.

Can you imagine the damage?!

The diningroom was flooded and so was our bathroom, which resulted in a messed-up bathroom vanity.

The guys finally came to replace the vanity and because of all the unpacking and repacking, I decided to reorganise the cupboard.

I had our medicines in two cooler bags like these and now they’re all organised in one of my favourite organising tools, Ziploc bags, like this:

My categories are in the order – most used to least used

• painkillers
• cold and flu – I swear by Degoran and it goes EVERYWHERE with us
• Marcia’s stuff
• Dion’s stuff
• skin (sunburn – remember we live in Africa, other burn (I have a tendency to burn my arms when I’m too quick removing things from the oven) and mosquito repellant)

Here you can see them peeking out of one of the drawer’s.

Where and how do you store your medication?

This week I decluttered a whole lot of hotel toiletries.

I always have good intentions to use them all, either for us or for guests, but when we get back home, I revert to my normal-sized bottles.

After I had a good sort through our guest bedroom, I decided that this is crazy. We really don’t have people staying over that much and these things are piling up.

So I donated two bottles of body lotion because I like specific lotions and put the shower gels and some other shampoos in the shower.

And wouldn’t you know it? I’m actually using them. It feels really good to throw away a bottle every two days.


What did you declutter this week?

Please link to the post on your blog where you show off your pictures or talk about the declutter. Or if you don’t have a blog, tell me in the comments about ANYTHING you decluttered this week.

It can be anything – physical, electronic, mental clutter or even the need to be a certain way. Like perfectionism!

What did you declutter this week?

I’ve been threatening to declutter my make-up for awhile and when I saw someone’s nicely organised make-up drawer (was it you, Amanda?), I was inspired.

After (from L to R) – eye stuff, lip stuff, miscellaneous stuff and eye shadow in the front, all nicely containerised

I used to have two tubs on the middle shelf – one is now completely gone. I LOVE SPACE!!!

Have you decluttered your make-up yet? How about your bathroom junk?

One of the most important parts of organising is tweaking your systems.

It’s perfectly normal to organise a space and find that it’s not quite working the way you envisioned.

That doesn’t mean you throw out the whole thing! Please don’t do that

All you need to do is a little tweak here and there.

Like this:
The other night I was doing my whole face routine and realised that I was slightly irritated by a tiny cabinet above my basin. Remember, I have the dubious honour of having the smallest bathroom in the world. My Private Platinum Clients actually love seeing it – I should charge admission

This is how it looked before. There are tiny mirrored doors which open to the left and yet, I use the Yardley Oatmeal range on the left.

It took me about 5 seconds to do a quick tweak and move the bottles to the other side, like this:

Much better! Now when I slide the doors open, I can get to the moisturiser immediately and I don’t have to slide the doors an extra 10 cm open.

It’s about the small things. In the coaching world we also call these small things tolerations – they drain you just a little bit every time you think about it.

If there’s a space that seems just slightly off to you, think about making a tweak here and a tweak there until it’s organised just enough for your lifestyle.

What are you going to go tweak and re-organise?

For more WFMW posts, visit Shannon

Wow, I haven’t done one of these for a while. And then I found the last of the basket posts in my drafts!

here is post 1 and here is post 2 on organising with baskets. There are more great ideas in this e-course.

This is how I organise the smallest bathroom in the world. Honestly, I’d love to know if you’ve ever seen anything smaller I certainly haven’t!

my bedside table – night cream, hand cream, bookmarks, pens, etc.

P.S. Guess who bought 12 cute baskets at Pick & Pay? That’s right – at only R4,99 each, can you blame me?!

Are you sold on baskets yet? Make me happy and tell me YES!

Dion and I have been together for 15 years today! Married for 12 1/2 of those years

A reader emailed this question:
How do I sort out a medicine cupboard? How do I store the contents? What do I keep in a first aid box in a family situation?

Lots of great questions!

1. First off, I would unpack everything and clean the cupboard.
2. While the inside of the cupboard is drying, go through all the medicines and throw away any that have expired. When you repack them, put those that are about to expire in the front.
3. I only have one smallish bag for all our stuff because we’re not sickly. I have Strepsils, Cepacol, Degoran (my favourite – now I sound like a druggie), Nurofen, Panado, burn ointment (because I always seem to burn myself when I use the oven), Tabard, Imodium, cold sore ointment, plasters and Savlon, Norflex and something for gastro cramps.
4. I have a separate travel medicine bag (an old make-up bag) with just a few of each of these main things. I set up this little bag after we once drove 40km to the nearest town for medicines on one long weekend away. Lesson learnt thanks to Lichtenburg!

this looks a bit messy but it’s not really – I think it’s my bad photography

My medicine cabinet is the corner bathroom vanity cupboard and it has five main sections…

1. medicine (grey bag)

2. Dion’s toiletries (top blue basket and little round thing)

3. cleaning stuff (green basket)

4. extra toilet rolls and air freshener (not visible in this pic)

5. all the bath stuff (bottom blue basket and top right) (candles, bath salts, bath foam, etc) because this is the only bath we have in the house. Our en-suite only has a shower.

I think first aid boxes vary according to your family’s needs so I would buy a standard one and customise it for my family’s needs.

What do you keep in your first aid box?

I recently came across this two-in-one dust pan and bathroom bin at Pick & Pay for about R15. They had them in lime-green (pictured), hot pink, yellow and blue.

I love it because when it stands upright (like in the picture), it is a bin and when I want to sweep the bathroom, I just turn it on its side and it scoops up the dust. I also like that it can fit into my small bathroom’s awkward corner so I use less space.

I’ve had this for a few weeks now and it certainly works for me.

Works for me Wednesday home

Loooong ago, I posted about the smallest bathroom in the world – mine!

As you can well imagine, storage is a problem so we do a couple of things to maximise the space:

1. we use a shower caddy for shampoo, shower gel, soap and so on
2. I keep hooks in the shower for facecloths and loofah sponges
3. I keep a medium-sized plastic basket in the shower for my cleaning supplies
4. I have hooks just outside the shower for the towels (you can just about see the towel if you click my original link)
5. I use this 3-tiered plastic basket. A vegetable rack would serve the same purpose.

Bottom – spare toilet rolls

What kinds of solutions do you have for small spaces?