Mini Declutter Week Day 2: Ten minute bathroom sort-out

Here’s a 10-minute mini bathroom declutter exercise for Day 2 of our Declutter Week challenge. Let’s go! (The full declutter schedule is here if you need a reminder.)

A clean, tidy, well-organised bathroom can make everyday life so much easier – no more stumbling around half-asleep looking for stuff first thing in the morning or last thing at night. It’s well worth the effort.

Which bathroom area to choose

It’s important to pick a small area to sort out, ideally something that will take ten minutes or less.

Don’t try to do the whole bathroom at once, or you risk becoming overwhelmed or distracted. Stick to a limited area that you can fully complete in the time.

Examples for a mini bathroom declutter:

• Around the sink
• Around the bath
• Bathroom windowsill
• A shelf in a cabinet or cupboard
• Bath towels
• Bathroom cleaning products
• Counter or tabletop
• Shower caddy
• Baby bath items or bath toy collection
• First aid kit or medicines
• Pampering products

That’s just a few quick ideas to get you started, and I’m sure you can come up with a few more of your own depending on your individual situation and needs.

How to do your mini bathroom declutter

Once you’ve chosen the spot, the most important thing do do next is this: make a firm decision about how you want this small area to function.

You should only keep things here that work for you, whether that’s an organised shower caddy filled with early-morning essentials, a pretty pampering box that’s neatly out of the way for occasional use, or a calm, tidy spot for taking off jewellery and cleaning your teeth after a long day.

Here’s the running order:

• Clear up the small space you’ve chosen to tackle (for example, remove physical clutter from a shower caddy, windowsill, shelf or drawer and put it to one side)
• Clean the area (dust, wipe, scrub, etc) then dry it well
• Sort through the clutter quickly so you don’t get sidetracked (keep here, keep but move, put on mending pile, bin or recycle, donate, sell)
• Add structure if needed (boxes, baskets, shower caddy, toothbrush holder) – you might need to improvise temporarily if you don’t already own these
• Put the ‘keep here’ things back, grouping similar items together
• Now do the other immediate jobs (put things away elsewere, get things into the bin or recycling box)
• Choose a timeframe for other tasks (take things to the charity shop, donate old towels to an animal shelter, list unwanted items on Vinted etc) – I try to get this sorted out within a week if possible so the mess doesn’t hang around
• Make a shopping list (what do you still need for this space, if anything?)

You might need to buy a few organising items here, once you’ve cleaned and tidied, just to keep the clutter at bay in the future. Two things to keep in mind here: they’ll probably need to be rustproof and waterproof if they’re going in or around the bath or shower, and possibly also smashproof.

Tidy solutions include adding a new shelf or two, or getting baskets for inside cupboards, a nice toothbrush mug, waterproof hooks and organisers (lots of affordable options at Dunelm), or a new shower caddy (John Lewis have several good rustproof ones).

Once your bathroom is feeling more organised, perhaps you’d like to make it look more attractive too. Maybe a lick of bathroom paint, some stylish new towels, plants or ornaments would quickly help to brighten the place up.

What’s happening here?

I’ve recently completed a mini bathroom declutter at our house. It was the top shelf in our main bathroom cupboard, which is supposed to be where we keep the toilet rolls within easy reach, plus everyday spare shower gel, toothpaste and shampoo from multi-buy offers.

Over time this shelf has just filled up with random clutter, so I ended up moving a few things to the ‘stuff we don’t use regularly’ box on another shelf, and rinsing and recycling some almost-empty bottles that were never going to get finished.

It’s been a lot easier to keep tidy since then, and we can see where everything is without having to hunt around.

That’s how I’ve been decluttering our bathroom, bit by bit. It really works.

Which small area of your bathroom do you want to tidy up and organise first?