Bathroom Vanity Declutter (Part 1)
I chose the bathroom vanity as my first decluttering project because I needed to clean it off anyway and it was also the bathroom deep clean week. Initially I expected to it all in one day but it turned out that it took about 4-1/2 hours to do the 3 drawers and top of the vanity so I chose to do the cabinets under the sink another day. There was a time when I would have really beat myself up about “quitting” and not given myself credit for what I had done because I hadn’t finished it the same day. As I tell clients all the time, it doesn’t matter how slowly it takes to get to the goal – what’s important is the effort. Five minutes of decluttering is better than zero. 3 drawers is better than none at all! There is zero room for shame when we are creating positive change in our lives.
The Master Bathroom Vanity
The two vanities in the primary bathroom are huge. This is just mine and Jon has an identical one across the room. The primary en suite bathroom was a huge reason that I fell in love with this house. In my previous house, I had a very small bathroom and I changed out the vanity to add some storage. I was really limited by the size of the bathroom which was built in the 1930s.
The thing that I loved about these giant vanities is that the 3 drawers are larger as you descend so the bottom drawer is deepest. It’s deep enough that a hair spray bottle will stand up in it! Unfortunately all that storage meant that I could hang on to every sample, every hair care item, every skin care item, indefinitely. Which led to the chaos that you see in the “before” picture here. The vanity top would get so cluttered because the drawers were full of random things.
The goals of the bathroom declutter were:
- Look at everything that was in there.
- Throw away anything empty, mostly empty, and expired.
- Make sure everything that remains has a place.
- Get as much stuff off the vanity top as possible.
Some things I know that I want to keep up there for ease, like my contact solution, but other things don’t need to be up there, like sunscreen. Sunscreen didn’t have a place so I couldn’t put it away without effort. Making things as effortless as possible moving forward seems important for success!
How I Decluttered and Organized My Bathroom
Instead of taking everything out of the entire vanity – which would have been way too overwhelming – I went drawer by drawer. I started in the bottom drawer which is where I keep most of my hair products there and since I started wearing my hair wavy/curly I don’t use products with silicones in them anymore. I knew that I would probably be getting rid of a lot of things in that drawer and that would give me a lot of room for reorganizing things.
The Bottom Drawer After Decluttering:
Decluttering All My Old Hair Products
I had a lot of things I didn’t realize that I had, once I put everything out in the open!
In addition to the hair products, the bottom drawer also holds my “stash” aka all of my skincare extras and samples. I had not been through it in at least a year so there were things in there that had definitely expired.
I had a bag of Living Proof hair products that I didn’t even know that I had.
Some of the items will be donated, if they have seals and have not expired.
After wiping out the drawer, I put the haircare items I was keeping back into the storage bin. My Lush bath bombs and bubble bars have a paper that I kept with them so I could remember what scents they are. That was making everything look messy so I put it into the bin with them.
Once everything was back inside the drawer, about 1/4 of it was empty! Not too shabby.
Decluttering the Other Vanity Drawers
The other drawers I handled the same way, taking everything out, looking at what I had. I threw away anything that was expired or basically empty. One face mask pretty much was empty!
This drawer still looks a little cluttered but like items are placed together now and I reduced the face masks by at least 1/3! This left room in the bin for my headband and bonnets. I also put all of the chargers for various electronic items together and moved the Clairsonic that I don’t use nearly enough from the vanity into the drawer. I also moved the cup of hair clips from the vanity into the drawer. Since I no longer blow dry my hair, I don’t use clips very often anymore.
The Final Drawer
The last drawer is my most used items but I had a few items in it that I no longer use. I don’t use a brush anymore, I haven’t used an eyelash curler in years, and my scrunchies and clips were a mess! Not to mention I had some tubes that I had cut open to get the rest of the product out that had been in there way too long.
The Bathroom Vanity “After”
