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Bathrooms are an often overlooked room. We take them and the amount of time we spend in them for granted. Any room that you spend A LOT OF TIME in should look and feel good to you. You deserve to feel good in your home. Your family deserves to feel good in your home.
Simple changes can go a long way! This weeks tasks aren’t that time-consuming if you choose. It’s up to you how many projects or how many bathrooms you want to involve this week. Let the amount of time you have available guide you as you decide what projects to select. For things you’d really like to do, but don’t have time for this week, use your calendar and make an appointment with yourself at a future date to get that task done.
If we are continually improving our homes, we will continue to love our homes. True story.
The options for this week are ….
Options – Easy
- Wall Decor: Take everything off the walls and give yourself a fresh start. It’s okay if you put some of the same things back instead of all-new stuff, but maybe put old things in new places or even a different bathroom in your house.
- Linens: When’s the last time you decorated the bathroom? Is the shower curtain drab? Are the towels in good shape? How about the bath mats – do they match, have stains? This might be the right week to give the linens an update! These simple purchases can make the bathroom look new!!
- Bathroom Drawers: Time to clean out those bathroom drawers, add decorative liner (I prefer non-adhesive), put in some good dividers that fit the stuff you want to store. Go the extra mile and update the drawer pulls! They can be inexpensive and make a big difference!
- Bathroom Cabinets: Every time you open your cabinets, you deserve to find what you need quickly and easily. And it can look good too! Take the time to arrange things well.
- Linen Closet: Gut your closet and arrange things in an eye-pleasing way. Make things you use regularly easy to access. Making a simple change like this will make using this closet easier every day. It shouldn’t be a surprise that you’ll love your home more when it’s easier to use.
Options – Big
- Paint.
- Add new or replace existing hardware or lighting.
- Re-finish worn or outdated cabinet finishes.
- Add or replace curtains/ window treatments.
Before you select one of these options, remember to do just one at a time!
FREE Bathroom Printables
In light of Water Lalapalooza 2016, I decided not to re-invent the wheel with the new Printables this week. I’ve found some AWESOME FREE PRINTABLES from other bloggers. I love all of these!!!
Design, Dining and Diapers offers a sleek design with a pop of humor. Perfect. {Get them HERE.}
Nikki Lynn Design made me laugh out loud with her hilarious bathroom printables. There are four downloads available, two more that aren’t shown here. {Get them HERE.}
Raising Hope and 2 Crazy Boys offers these adorable printables. If you like this printable below, there are several themed like this in gray, red, and navy. {Get Gray and Red HERE.} — {Get Navy HERE.}
Over The Big Moon has these super fun printables, and there is also a yellow FLOSS one on the blog. {Get them HERE.}
What I’ll Be Doing
This week I’ll be organizing my girls bathroom. The setup is completely different from our last house. The 3 girls share a Jack & Jill Bathroom, so I have to figure out how to split up the washcloths, towels, hairbrushes, and all the other accessories and general girl stuff that used to all be in one place.
They even have a closet in their bathroom to organize! The space is just begging for some organizing! (Not to mention some paint and updates … but this bathroom isn’t near the top of the list for that, so just organizing for now.)
I have all the stuff unpacked in their bathroom (and they’ve been using it for 3 weeks), but I haven’t put in drawer dividers or any of the other little things I’ll do to make it work… so it’s kind of a mess.
But honestly, if I study the mess before I clean it up and organize, I’ll be able to tell how they’re using the space and organize it better. And then hopefully it won’t be such a mess again. (I can dream, right?!)
You better believe I’ll have a certain assistant helping me. She’s already re-arranged things several times impatiently waiting for me to come help her get things right. “Mom, when are WE going to organize the bathroom?!” I love how kids don’t get the irony of saying that while I’m dealing with a flood. lol.
Your Turn To Decide
What will you be doing in your bathrooms this week that will help you love your home again? I really want to know!
If you haven’t read about my Water Lalapalooza yet, go see what I’ve been dealing with … fun times!!!
From my home to yours,
Mary
So sorry about the water issue! What a pain!!!
Bathrooms! Nothing in our house needs painting, except for the laundry room which needs *un-wallpapering* and then painting. 😉 I love the color the previous owners painted the bathrooms so that is staying. When we moved in I had to buy new towels and shower curtains and rugs because nothing we had matched the paint color. So, that’s taken care of!
This week:
I will organize the cupboards and medicine cabinet in the master bathroom! The main bathroom has very little in the cabinets, so nothing really to organize.
And on the list of “want to” is to find some decorative touches for the bathrooms. I don’t have anything on the walls or counters.
Great goals! Update me on how it goes!
I will be working on: under sink cabinet(our only storage) and making a small one sink bathroom cabinet work for 3 people, medicine cabinet, and wall decor. We just painted and got new floor mats at Christmas.
Great goals! I think you’ll feel a lot better in the bathroom after this week!
Mary I am confused……….about this sentence (me and my ocd)…………..This week I’ll be organizing my girls bathroom. The setup is completely different from our last house. The 3 girls share a Jack & Jill Bathroom, so I have to figure out how to split up the washcloths, towels, hairbrushes, and all the other accessories and general girl stuff that used to all be in one place……………..Isn’t a Jack and Jill bathroom one bathroom that the 3 girls will be sharing so I am confused as to why you have to split it up. Didn’t they share a bathroom before and are sharing one now too? THANK YOU FOR ALL YOUR GREAT IDEAS!!
Gayle – Jenny was correct. It is kind of the same bathroom, but setup so differently that it is like separate bathrooms in a way. They toilet/bath area is shared, but the two sink areas are completely separate rooms, so they will each need organization for brushes/hair stuff, other girl stuff, etc.
OH and I haven’t decide what I am going to do this week yet. Probably going to reline my drawers. Suggestions for liner?
I like non-adhesive liner. Here are the two I’m using in this new house, I got them on Amazon: http://amzn.to/2cUrgMO & http://amzn.to/2cZnGiQ
If it slips around in the drawer, I’ll tape it down with a little carpet tape. 🙂 I use this one: http://amzn.to/2dkdBhV
I hope this helps!
Thanks Mary that’s my problem my line is in good condition but it slips around or rolls up a little. So I think I will look into the carpet tape.
If you try it, let me know what you think. With all the water damage, I had to remove the tape I had put down on my wood floors under carpet and it came up with no residue and no problems… I was impressed. I had tested it before I put it down, but this tape has been down for a while now and still no problems.
My bathrooms would benefit most from a thorough cleaning (I know… not sure I should admit that in public!). 🙂
Mary, I am wondering how you like the Jack & Jill setup. We are thinking about that for our next house, but I keep wondering if our boys would accidentally (or purposefully) lock each other out. Like, one would go to take a shower and lock both doors, then go back into his room, and forget to unlock the door to his brother’s room. Has that been an issue? Maybe girls are more thoughtful and considerate. 😉
Gayle, I’m not sure, but I think Mary’s Jack & Jill bathroom is actually three separate rooms with a sink / mirror room on each end and the toilet / shower room in between. So, there would need to be hand towels as well as toiletries that aren’t kept in the shower in each of the sink rooms.
I’m not sure about the Jack & Jill setup yet! Ask me again in a few months. We are using it a little differently than you plan to, though. The two girls rooms are 1) the room they sleep in and 2) their clubhouse that they hang out in. Having three girls share two rooms, this is how it works best for us. So I’m not sure we’ll run into the same bathroom locking scenarios. I could see that happening with boys, though! 🙂
I need to do the two large drawers in my sink vanity, and I have another cube stand (not sure what they are called, but the stands that have the compartments and you put the cubes in them and store stuff in the cloth cubes). Those two are the only storage places that I have in my master bathroom. I will need to remove all of the extra things that are in the bathroom, also, because I have thrown bags and bags of papers in there to put off going through them all after my closet was full with bags. If I have extra time, I’d love to return to my kitchen and work on the cabinets in there some, even though the rule is not to go back to the previous week, but it really needs done to get the rest of the clutter off of my table. I won’t have extra time, anyway, I’m sure, but just in case. 🙂
I think removing the things that don’t belong in the bathroom is a great start. Work fast and hard and see how much you can get done! You may surprise yourself! 🙂
I’m a little behind on the challenge, but I replaced the toilet seat. The one we were using in our master bath was original to our house (which we bought new, but that was 15 years ago!). It turned out to be a much easier process than I imagined, and now it’s like we have a whole new bathroom! 🙂
Oh my goodness! Yes! New toilet seats make such a difference! Once you can get the porcelain sparkling and then add a new seat, it is like a new toilet. I have 3 more to change out here. One at a time, I’ll get there. 🙂
Help! I followed your advice on cleaning a really grungy toilet–with the steel wool you recommended and the Shaklee paste. Some areas turned grey from the steel wool–how should I get rid of them?
The Scour Off paste by itself with a wet rag should do the trick. It took all the gray spots off of my white porcelain sink and even off of white porcelain China!
Thank you–that worked nicely.
Great!!