people don't spend time in junkyards and there's a reason for that

This post is a detour, but a much needed and very important detour.

Humans spend a lot of time in the bathroom. It just seems to be a fact of life.

Spending time in spaces that look like this:

(picture from here)

…is not necessarily super fun. If your bathroom looks like the junkyard pictured above, or a different junkyard, or if you find things that look like this:

(picture from here)

lying around, or even if it just feels a little cluttered, here’s what you should do:

HOW TO CLEAN YOUR BATHROOM IF IT LOOKS LIKE A JUNKYARD

1. Start with the things you see right when you walk into the room. Don’t focus on drawers quite yet. (Just to be clear, I’m not telling you how to clean a toilet or a bathtub, more like a countertop.)

2. Clear the counter. For this step, I put all of the stuff that was on my counter in a big tub like this one:

, and put the tub on the floor and out of the way. 

3. Physically clean the counter. If you’re anything like me, your counter isn't just cluttered. There are hard-water deposits all over the place, especially around the sink, globs of things that you'd put on your face or in your hair if they weren't on your counter, etc.

To rid your bathroom of these, use a cleaner suitable for whatever type of counter you have (I have granite (?), so I used 409 Stone & Steel cleaner.)

the drama.

Sticky stuff will usually come off with a few good wipes of a paper towel, but luckily I didn’t encounter much of that this time around.

For hard-water deposits, I first used 409 and a paper towel, then 409 and a scrubby-bristly-brush thing, and then Lemi-Shine (For those who don’t know, Lemi-Shine is stuff that goes in the dishwasher along with… dishwashing stuff and it gets the hard-water deposits off of glassware.) This mostly worked, but it was hard to scrub in the tight areas around the faucet. I was more concerned about the clutter, but if you’re wanting to get really nitty-gritty, try using an old toothbrush to scrub the harder to reach spots.

4. Now that your countertop is spotless and sparkling comes the hard part. It’s time to sort through all of the junk. I sorted everything into piles of what they’re used for (i.e. hair, nails, teeth, face, etc.), just to make it easier to look at than one big heaping pile of hairspray, toothpaste, and lotion.

5. Then I threw away the stuff that was gross and  the stuff that I never used. At this point, you really do have to be willing to throw things away. Truly consider what you actually use on a daily basis. You don’t have to throw away everything! That said, be reasonable about it and don’t keep the never-opened bottle of expensive lotion that you bought three years ago.

6. Here, it’s a really good idea to have some sort of organizer. I got one for Christmas, but you can find them online here. I distinguished between things I use on a daily basis and things that I use every so often (or even never, but I saw no reason to throw away perfectly good chapstick). I tucked away the things I only use every so often in drawers, and filled the organizer with stuff I actually use.

7.  By now it’s really up to you as to how you’re going to organize everything. From previous experience, I would not recommend clumping, say, all of your hair stuff together, rather putting your bobby-pins separate from your hair ties. I’ve found that the less clear you make each item’s designated “spot,” the easier it will be for the whole thing to fall back into chaos. Again, though, it’s really up to you and what you know will work.

8.  Leave as few things as possible out in the open. A lineup of three bottles (detangler, dry shampoo, and a different hair thing that apparently has ten different uses), a big bottle of mouthwash, my toothbrush, a huge jar of coconut oil, and hand soap are the only things not in some kind of storage trinket. The fewer things without a specific spot, the less room for error (and the further in the future your next clean-out will need to be).

so nice

9.  Keep everything as nice as possible for as long as possible. Good luck!

Alright,

Sam