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SEPTEMBER 22 - 28, 2022 | PAGE 9
Your Home: Design & Improvement
How to Banish Bathroom Clutter BY TIM MCKEOUGH NEW YORK TIMES
Even the most beautiful, spa like bathroom can be defeated by a common foe: the clutter created by bottles, soaps, washcloths, toothbrushes, cosmetics and other toiletries left out on every available surface. “The bathroom is a space that can set you up for success or failure in the day,” said Marissa Hagmeyer, co-founder of the home-organizing company Neat Method. “If it’s a disaster, it’s hard to get ready for the day, and you’re automatically heading out the door in a rough mood.” But if your bathroom is neat and tidy — and every object has its place — “you can quickly locate what you need, do what you need to do, and get on with more important things,” Hagmeyer said. And at the end of the day, “you can come in, take a deep breath and relax.” We asked professional organizers and designers how they banish bathroom clutter.
Take Stock of Storage Space If your vanity drawers and medicine cabinet aren’t neatly organized — and you simply dump in whatever you buy from the drugstore — you may be surprised at how much space you already have. The best way to begin a bathroom cleanup, Hagmeyer said, is to take everything out and get rid of anything you know you’ll never use. “When we’re organizing, people are really surprised by the number of samples and travel-size things they accumulate,” she said, in addition to expired bottles of lotion, sunscreen and medication. Keep only the few products you actually use, she advised, and dispose of everything else. Once the purge is complete, look at how much storage space you have and consider whether the remaining items will fit in a reasonably uncluttered way. Make More Room
If you conclude that you don’t have enough storage space in the bathroom to hold everything, it’s possible to create more. During a renovation, one option is to recess one or a couple of cabinets into the wall cavity, between studs. “You’re capturing little nooks to create additional storage,” said Monica Fried, an interior designer in New York. Many medicine cabinets are designed to be recessed into the wall above a vanity, but that is not the only option. Fried sometimes recesses shallow cabinets into other bathroom walls, with mirrored or painted doors. “Sometimes it’s a flat panel, so it just looks like part of the wall,” she said, but opens like a tiny closet to reveal toiletries. Jessica Davis, founder of Atelier Davis, a design studio with offices in Atlanta and South Orange, New Jersey, has added armoire-size builtins to some bathrooms and semirecessed cabinets just a few inches deep to others. “Shampoo and hair products don’t require a ton of space,” she
ORGANIZING YOUR BATHROOM Clutter can set you up for success. (P����: N�� Y��� T����) said. “It’s not like storing books on a shelf, where you need 12 inches of depth.” In the bathroom, 3 or 4 inches will usually suffice. If you would rather avoid cutting
holes and mounting cabinets to the wall, an easier option is to add a freestanding piece of furniture. In larger bathrooms, some designers install Continued from Page 14