Organization — Kids' Bathrooms

One of the interesting things about building a house is that you walk in and have no toilet paper holders, no towel bars...nothing. Well, except a standard bathroom mirror you might not really like. So what's a person to do?

When we met with the building superintendent, we asked that they not put any bathroom mirrors up. That way if we turned around and took them down right away we wouldn't be dealing with holes in the wall we probably couldn't cover up, Murphy's Law and all. In the meantime while we were waiting for the house to be built, we looked around at the discount stores, Marshall's, etc., for mirrors that we liked for good prices, with simple framing we liked, and that would fit over the different bathroom counters.

That was the easy part. Finding towel bars and stuff that I liked was a lot trickier. Do you know they don't make much of anything in a black finish? Most of it is antique bronze at best. So I fretted and fussed and we dealt without for a couple of months.

When my good friend Monica was here in December with Buddy's best friend from Virginia, we'll call him Leftie for anonymity and because, well, he's a leftie (I just realized his best friend from Illinois is a leftie, too. How weird is that?), Monica and I went to Ikea. Monica is ten years younger than me, but she is my twin separated at birth. She claims to not be quite as obsessive as me, but give her ten years.

So as we spent a little while, say about six or seven hours, in Ikea wandering and completely enjoying ourselves, they had this little display in one of the bathroom nooks. It was a black bar with some galvanized buckets hanging from it. When we got to the kitchen area to check it out, they had some other items that I figured out how to use in the kids' bathrooms.

Here is what we did in the second floor bathroom that Sparky, Buddy, and Caboose share:

The bar on the top is shorter than the one on the bottom. Each of the three kids that share this bathroom has a bucket for their toothbrush and toothpaste because they have a fairly small countertop. Plus none of the toothbrush holders these days hold the ones with the fatter handles. Each of my kids also has their own tube of toothpaste, so that gets to be a little too much on the countertop.

Chatty has her own bathroom up on the third floor next to her bedroom. Since it's just for her, it's a little more girly and I did it a little differently.

Instead of the galvanized bucket, she has the creamy white oval-shaped one. It still serves the same purpose. Her bars are also both the same length since her bathroom is a little smaller.

These bars, hanging shelves, and buckets were designed to go in a kitchen and hold tools, spices, and other things. They had other accessories you could hang from the bars if you used them in a kitchen, but they weren't really functional for me in the bathroom. At least I couldn't figure out a way to use them.

As I'm staring at the top picture, I realize I might have to start folding the towels that go in that bathroom the opposite way so the edges don't show. Either that or move a door opening, and I don't think the second one is an option.

This post is linked to Blissfully Domestic.