So you might have thought I’d forgotten all about my 50 Weeks to Organized project—
But nope.
In fact, I myself was kind of freaking out about the whole thing the other day, thinking there was no way I’d get everything done in the next 11 weeks, but then I realized something: after the bathroom, I only have four more projects left to do.
Pretty amazing, eh?
Seeing as how the bathroom is by far the smallest room in our apartment with the least storage, I would have tackled it near the beginning had it not been for my good intentions: you see, I have been planning to repaint our bathroom pretty much since we first moved in, and I wanted it to be all nice and repainted for this little makeover reveal.
But I discovered a Great Truth about decorating:
Sometimes you don’t need paint to brighten a room—sometimes you just need to rethink your accessories.
I’ve always loved our deep brown shower curtain, but I realized that it would look much better in a brighter bathroom (that actually had a window) that had other bright colors as accents. With our navy blue towels, it just made the room seem that much darker (plus it didn’t help that in our vanity light, we only had one lightbulb out of the three working).
After some really easy fixes: new shower curtain, two new lightbulbs, and clean surfaces, our bathroom looks almost like new.
Just as I’ve discovered over and over again during other organizational projects this year, I was holding on to a LOT of stuff I didn’t need—our bathroom may be tiny, but I sure had packed that space to the gills, and then some.
During my purge, I discovered hair and makeup products I haven’t used in years, as well as bottles of cleaning products that didn’t even have anything left in them.
With a couple other odds and ends thrown in the trash and everything else organized into boxes, bins, and drawers by type (hair products, cleaning supplies, etc.), I can now safely say that our bathroom is completely clutter-free.
At first it was strange to see the empty countertops—I almost felt like I needed to buy something to fill the space.
But that’s one of the biggest impulses that’s gotten me into the mess I’m in—I need to finally learn that empty spaces usually look better than cluttered ones (even if the “clutter” is a bunch of cutesy decorations).
Maybe someday I’ll reach more of a balance between being totally clutter-free and having a few decorations on flat surfaces, but for now, I’m just staying out of the temptation zone and not letting anything sit on them.
It’s kind of awesome, actually.
This Week’s Quick Stats:
# of Items Tossed/Donated: 20
# of Items Left to Toss/Donate Before Dec. 31st: 65
Amount of Money Spent on this Project: $25 ($15 for our shower curtain (Target), $4 for a new shower curtain liner (Smith’s), and $6 for two new lightbulbs)
Do you think most countertops (or other flat surfaces) look better completely free of anything? Or do you like to have a couple well-placed decorations here and there?
