Do you have a bathroom closet? If so, yay! It’s a great space to store all your medicines, toiletries, and first aid supplies. An organized bathroom closet is an asset to any home, so let’s get yours functioning properly!
Your Bathroom Closet
Why is bathroom medicine closet organization so important? Let’s check out the following situations and see which one you’d prefer to experience.
Scenario 1: A Sick Child and a Disorganized Medicine Closet
It’s 3 am and you wake up to a crying child. You run, disoriented, to their room and find a hot, sweaty tangle in the sheets. Their little forehead is on fire. You need to find the thermometer. You think it’s in your bathroom closet, but where is it? Tampons. Shaving cream. Cotton balls. 700 band aids.
Turn on the lights. Argh. You keep searching, waiting for your eyes to adjust. Where is that thermometer?? Did you leave it in the kitchen? No. you’re pretty sure it’s here. Asprin. Lotion. Nail polish. Ah! Finally, thermometer.
You flip the light off and head back to your child, blind again. 101.6. Hot, but not scary-hot. He needs some medicine to cool him down and make him more comfortable. Back to the medicine cabinet.
Scenario 2: A Sick Child and an Organized Bathroom Closet
It’s 3 am and you wake up to a crying child. You run, disoriented, to their room and find a hot, sweaty tangle in the sheets. Their little forehead is on fire. You need to find the thermometer. You know it’s on the 4th shelf in your medicine closet. Middle basket. Got it.
You walk back to your child (you can see perfectly well since you didn’t have to turn the light on) and take care of business. 101.6. Hot, but not scary-hot. He needs some medicine to cool him down and make him more comfortable. Back to the medicine cabinet.
Kids’ medicine is in the same basket as the thermometer. 4th shelf, middle basket. What’s that dosing again? Turn on the light. Go blind. How much does he weigh? How old is he? 1 and a half pills? How do you cut a pill in half?
Benefits of an Organized Bathroom Closet
Regardless of how organized your medicine cabinet is, having a sick kid is stressful, so you don’t need the added stress of chaos and clutter.
Or maybe that’s not your life. Maybe you don’t have kids and fevers in the middle of the night aren’t something you need to be prepared for. But you might cut your finger and need a bandaid, burn yourself on your curling iron and need burn cream, or have a broken fingernail and need a file.
Regardless of the situation and the stress level, it’s nice to find things when they’re needed. Having an organized bathroom cabinet is beneficial because:
- You know what you have.
- You know it’s current.
- You can find it when you need it.
- You can track what you need.
- You save money by not purchasing doubles or triples.
- You can find what you have
When you have a system in place — and regularly maintain it — your items have a home and you know they’re current. It makes any stressful situation that much less stressful.
Medicine cabinets should be thoroughly edited about once a year. This gives you a chance to take inventory, toss expired stuff, purge stuff you clearly won’t use, and tidy up from all those middle of the night runs.
Your Organized Bathroom Closet
Step 1: Gather Everything
Gather all your toiletries, medicines, and self-care items and put them all in one spot. Your bathroom floor, kitchen table, or bedroom floor all work.
This may seem inconvenient, but it’s a great way to see everything you have (and HOW MUCH you have). It will allow you to make the best choices in the following step.
Step 2: Sort into Categories
Sort your items into categories. Every person has different products and needs, so there’s no one size fits all. Look for common elements. If you have enough of something, make it a category.
Here are the bathroom closet categories we have:
- His
- Hers
- Medicines
- Soap
- Nails
- First Aid
- Soap
- Eye Care
- Oral Care
- Cottons
- Travel
You may find you need a category for hair care or makeup — I put those items in the “his” and “her” bins.
Step 3: Purge
As you sort, check expiration dates. Let go of anything that’s expired, dried out, or that you don’t love.
I know it seems wasteful. And it is. But you spent money on it when you thought you needed it, and now that you’re realizing you didn’t need it, it’s okay to let it go. Learn from this and try to avoid doing it again in the future.
Do the best you can with the items you’re letting go of. Recycle what you can. Return prescriptions to the pharmacy or your local police department (DON’T flush them, please!). Donate toothbrushes and toiletries you won’t use for shelters. LET IT GO. And don’t feel guilty.
Step 4: Contain & Place
While it’s not always necessary to contain your items, it can be very helpful in a bathroom closet where you’re storing so many small items.
You can use shoeboxes, bins, turntables, tiered racks, or any other favorite container — you may find that different containers work for different items.
When using bins (these white bins are my favorite), be sure to 0Put the items in each category into an appropriately sized bin. If the bin is too small, your items won’t fit and they’ll get messy quickly. If the bin is too large, you’ll be wasting valuable space.
Place your containers in your closet, keeping the items you reach for most often on the closest shelves and the items you reach for less often on the lower and higher shelves.
Step 6: Label
Sticky notes. Painter’s Tape. Masking Tape. Chalk labels. Vinyl stickers. Marker. Whatever your preferred method of labeling is, get labeling!
Labeling your bins helps you find what you’re looking for and know where to put it back, which is essential for maintaining your organizational system. It also helps others do the same.
My Organized Bathroom Closet
That’s it! Everything you’ve ever wanted to know (and more!) about organizing your medicine cabinet.
Let me know your thoughts! And if I’ve inspired you to tackle your medicine cabinet, please share your pictures through Facebook, email, or Instagram! I’d love to see them!
