Messy Spot

Our house has trouble spots like any other. One odd one for us is the downstairs powder room. Our townhouse layout is unique, with our en suite bathrooms and walk in closets taking up about 20% of our upper floor. The first year we lived here, I noticed that keeping the air conditoning vents in the bathrooms open caused our Electric bill to go up by about $15 per month. There are no  vents in the closets so they draw their air off the bathrooms. We started keeping them closed because it wasn’t noticeable for the few minutes we were in there a day.

What was affected by the slightly higher heat was my makeup that stayed in there all day.

So I started storing and applying my makeup in the powder room downstairs.

Since this is the bathroom our guests are most likely to use, it’s also a little embarrassing when it gets to be a mess. (Also if there is a lot of makeup items in the way, it’s more difficult to clean the bathroom.)

I spent 15 minutes this morning organizing and putting things away, and then cleaning the bathroom.

Before starting I found:

  • 2 makeup cases
  • An allen wrench
  • 2 carpentry nails
  • 2 brand new nail polishes.
  • An Empty spritzy bottle
  • Two perfume spritzers
  • Empty broken perfume bottle
  • 2 lipsticks
  • Lipliner
  • Two lip balms
  • 3 hair clips
  • Beauty blender stand
  • Foundation
  • Cream
  • Face lotion
  • 2 hand lotions
  • 3 mini hand lotions
  • Box of jewelry
  • Makeup pallete
  • Bronzer
  • 2 brushes
  • Deoderant
  • Jar of brushes
  • Beauty Blender Sponge

Things I found after I started cleaning:

  • Another lip balm
  • A pick comb
  • A mini concealer brush
  • A bunch of disposable mascara spoolies
  • Sunscreen

A significant contributor to the clutter mess in here was duplicate items. Now in theory it’s probably better for those beauty items to be clustered into the bathroom rather than all over the downstairs of the house, but they really needed to be put away in proper storage. Making a run into the upstairs made it much simpler to organize the mess. Another issue was makeup brushes and applicators that I rarely use. I knew from applying my makeup they were making it difficult to get the brushes I actually needed. I took a fist full of them to the spinning organizer upstairs. (There isn’t room for the organizer on the very limited counter space downstairs.)

I also was agitated that the box of q-tips had been tossed on to my shelf taking up a lot of space. I use these a lot for makeup removal and cleaning cat faces and ears. (Trying to convince one particular cat that her allergies require she not steal certain foods is impossible.) I put some in a prettier glass container (made for holding a candle actually) and put the rest of the box away, freeing up the whole shelf (these “shelves” are spice racks from Ikea).

The primary key to how I did the whole cleanup in 15 minutes was the system.

1. There are plenty of jars, and storage options in the bathroom.

2. I made one trip out of the bathroom to put things upstairs and bring in needed items. (Riley was mopping the kitchen so she brought the cleaning tools in.)

3. Shelves to get things off the counter. (There are two there for a reason!)

4.  I did leave a few things on the counter. My foundations is in a glass bottle and I’ve broken one before getting it off the shelf. My makeup sponge was still drying when I took pictures (it got a cleaning too.) My eyelash curler is just too awkward to hang out on the shelf.

5. The Glass full of Blue “water” is a Feng Shui cure for Retribution/Revenge flair ups for 2015’s Flying Stars.)

6. While it’s not much to look at, hopefully, I’ll be able to maintain the cleanliness for several weeks again.

Where could you implement a system and make future cleanups faster?

Erica
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