By Guest Blogger, Carrie Gilbertson

It is challenging to organize your bathroom when there is very little space to work with.

Even a slightly larger family bathroom comes with all sorts of difficulties, and clever storage ideas are essential if you do not want to descend into clutter hell.

Here we explore some of the best hacks for making the most of the space in your bathroom and ensuring your ablutions are organized.

Go Vertical

A white sink with a natural plywood countertop. Beauty products and a soap dispenser. — Karolina Grabowska

As with any small space, you need to take advantage of height as much as possible.

While we often visualize the area of a room as a floor plan, we need to embrace the three-dimensional.

Adding tiers can give you lots more space.

Take your sink area as a great example of this. You may have a basket under the sink and a cabinet above the sink that holds your tonics and potions.

You can do this everywhere in the bathroom, creating stacked containers or shelving that goes from floor to ceiling to give you as much surface space for organizing the clutter.

A black and wood bathroom storage shelf — Display Sense

You are going to have to be imaginative in tiny spaces.

When you sit in your bathroom, look up and think where a shelf might work.

It could be that there is an area above the door that is being wasted right now. Putting up a shelf and baskets as storage tubs could be a miracle in organizing clutter.

A storage shelf above the bathroom door — Good Housekepping

Create Zones

Organizing your clutter ensures you can easily find it again later.

Most of us fall into bad habits of leaving things out on surfaces because we become frustrated when we can’t lay our hands on them straight away.

Some items don’t even have to be stored in your bathroom, which can be in a drawer in a bedroom that’s easily located when needed.

Those little soaps you collect from hotel rooms on your trips don’t have to be out on show on the cabinet top in your bathroom.

You can easily store them away somewhere you know you will find them.

You could also get yourself a rolling cart that hides away in the hallway closet, which has everything you need within it.

A white rolling storage cart for the bathroom — Amazon

You can wheel this out as you go to the bathroom and have all you need in easy reach.

Labelled containers on this cart and in your linen cupboard can keep a family disciplined.

A gray small storage container — Display Sense

Make Full Use of the Sink Space.

Water running into a bathroom sink. Wood toothbrush — Karolina Grabowska

Much of the action in your bathroom will happen around the sink. This area of the bathroom needs to work harder than most.

If you have an underneath sink cabinet space, you must make the most of this space.

You can, for instance, add a tension rod and hang spray cleaning bottles off it. Alternative, you can use cabinet doors to hang linen organizers, holding your washing kit in different pockets.

Tension rods with cleaning supplies under the sink — The Spruce

Use tubs on the shelving of your cabinets so that you can keep smaller items together—for instance, a basket for your nail polish or medicines.

The biggest mistake you can make here is to pour all these items into one un-labelled tub.

You will find the frustration of searching through the detritus annoying.

Labels on the different tubs under your sink are essential if you feel organized.

If you don’t have a sink cabinet, you can purchase two corner shelving units and put them side by side around the pedestal of your sink.

A black and wood bathroom corner storage shelf — Display Sense

The gap is naturally created for the sink with a triangular shape and will appear to the world that this is a square shelf unit.

Make Use of the Area Over the Bath and Toilet.

The area above your bath is perfect for more shelving.

Floating shelves above the bathtub — Houzz

Again, it is taking things off the floor and using vertical space.

Here using shelves of the right width can provide space for towels without becoming a hazard for someone getting in and out of the tub.

Be careful when designing this space so that someone won’t constantly bang their head.

You can also get railings over the toilet cistern and create a zone where baskets can hang. Here you can store your toilet rolls and other items.

Summary

Organizing any small space comes down to two things,

1) storage and

2) using the vertical over the horizontal.

However, this isn’t the most important hack we have given you here. Out of everything, the humble label will offer you the most sanity in a tiny bathroom.

Getting your hands on what you want easily when you first wake up is likely to be the vital ingredient that keeps the bathroom organized.

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bathroom products on a white marble shelf: small bathroom organization ideas — Karolina Grabowska

Carrie Gilbertson is the Commercial Director of Display Sense. Established in 1978, Display Sense are one of the UK’s leading suppliers in display and storage-based products. They operate in a range of sectors such as Fashion, Retail, Hospitality, Banking, Education and many more.

The opinions and views expressed in any guest blog post do not necessarily reflect those of Michael Helwig Interiors or its Principal, Michael Helwig. Michael Helwig Interiors, and Michael Helwig, do not have any affiliations with any products or services mentioned in the article or linked to therein. Guest Authors may have affiliations to products mentioned or linked to in their author bios.