Challenge #3 - Kitchen Cabinets Part 2

As promised, here's the upper cabinets in the kitchen!

Before 

After

This first cabinet is above the plates/bowls/cups, and to the left of the sink. This is where I keep my casserole type dishes, my measuring cups, and where I moved the salad spinner. In the before picture you can see the extra white baskets that I moved to the utensil drawer, and several measuring cups I dejunked. I was doing pretty well with measuring cups, but I started to notice that a 4-cup measuring cup would come in really handy since I was starting to make larger and larger batches of everything. My husband got me a great 4-cup measuring cup for Christmas, as well as a 2-cup. So... I didn't need the old 2-cup, and I realized I really didn't need the 1-cup either, or the smaller set of measuring cups. I already use smaller measuring cups as the scoops in my flour & sugars, so if I really desperately needed a 1/4 cup ONLY for something, I could pull it out of that.

These are also all of my casserole dishes. I have one 9x13, one smaller oval that I think is about 7x9, and inside the oval one are two shallow serving dishes that nest in each other. On the top shelf I also have another 9x7 pyrex, and two 6x7 pyrexes, nested together, and two round pyrex bowls, one smaller without a lid.

We also have the remaining baby food in this cabinet. For a while we had a lot of baby food here, which is why our salad spinner was stored below... but our toddler is eating more table-food now, and we're not buying the baby food anymore.

Before 

After

To the right of the sink is our "catch-all" cabinet. It was kind of being overrun by random things we didn't know what else to do with. But now it's a bit better. The top shelf holds extra dry-goods that don't fit in the cabinet I'll show next. The middle shelf has our supplements, as well as straws and plastic utensils. I wanted to fit the straws & utensils on the bottom shelf, but they were too tall. the bottom shelf has ziploc bags in three sizes, as well as napkins, paper lunch sacks and coffee filters, which we often use for holding goldfish or other finger foods for snack time. (We don't drink coffee... so we don't use them for their intended purpose anyway.)

Before 

After

On the other side of the kitchen, to the left of the microwave is our dry-goods cabinet. This was also starting to get stuffed with random extras, including some raw nuts that were starting to go rancid (oops!). We straightened this cabinet, and even changed what some of the bins were holding and made room in a large one for some homemade pancake mix, which my 7 year old helped me mix.

Before

After

Above the microwave is another cabinet, that is too high for me to reach without a step. I laughed when I opened the cabinet for the before picture, because almost everything was missing from it. This cabinet normally holds the only two vases I own (one large plastic, and one small glass bud vase), a round bowl meant for centerpieces, and three pitchers. Even in the after picture, one of the pitchers was being used, so it wasn't put away.

Before 

After

And to the right of the microwave is the spice cabinet. As I was cleaning out the "catch-all" cabinet, I found 12 small empty spice jars that I had purchased a while ago from the bulk foods section of our grocery store... planning to transfer spices from much larger containers to save space... but then I never got around to actually doing it... until this project! I was able to downsize several spices that didn't even fill the new smaller jars, and a couple huge spice containers were able to be moved to the garage pantry shelves after filling a smaller jar. There is so much more room in this cabinet now, and the spice carousel actually spins freely without things falling off the back. :) I also had so much room that I was able to put the spices only on the outside of each level, and put other things in the middle. The top level only has extra toothpicks in the middle (we ended up with several extra small boxes of toothpicks after my husband helped with a cub scout activity), and the bottom shelf has cupcake wrappers and sprinkles in the middle.

I did keep a couple of the larger containers on the lower shelf for a couple reasons: We use things like the taco seasoning WAY too frequently to be refilling the tiny containers, and I ran out of smaller jars. :)

My recipe book is on the top shelf, along with one cookbook. I have a few more cookbooks in the garage, but I rarely reference them, and with limited space, they just didn't make the cut to the kitchen cabinets. :) The black recipe binder has most of the recipes that I use frequently, and we do a lot of normal dinner cooking without recipes at all... just winging it. If we do need a recipe for something, it is more likely that I will find something online, and won't even think to check the books I already have.

Before 

After

Finally, the cabinet above the fridge. I ended up donating the magnetic letters which I haven't been willing to use for the past 3+ years, as well as a Christmas tin that I'm not sure why I held onto in the first place. The round pyrex bowl with lid was moved to the first cabinet I showed above. The rest includes a box with a set of designer stem glasses that were a wedding present from my parents (his & hers Mickey & Minnie glasses that we use for very special occasions), and a set of 5 glasses (used to be 6) that were also a wedding present and have a frog icon stamped into the glass, and three mugs that I use for hot chocolate. I rearranged these so that I could also fit a bag of corn chips in the cabinet. We usually just toss the bag on top of the fridge, but the kids like to climb up there and make a mess with the chips when they know they're there... out of sight, out of mind, right?

Also, on top of the fridge you can see the broken panel from the utensil drawer, that I still need to fix.

And that concludes the kitchen! I still need to organize & straighten the pantry shelves in the garage a bit more, and that is an ever evolving process as we continue to add more to our food storage, and try to move things out of the kitchen.

For those that were wondering, my crockpot doesn't fit in any of the kitchen cabinets, and I don't use it nearly as often as I should... so it is usually stored on a shelf in the garage.

Challenge #3 - Kitchen Cabinets Part 1

Okay, so this challenge took me a bit longer than I intended, and a bit longer to write up than I anticipated... so I'm a bit late... but you forgive me, right?

Thanks. :)

To start... I have a small kitchen. I've had smaller, but usually with more cupboard space... at least this time I have a garage.

I've shown pictures of the kitchen before, but here's a refresher:

The sink side of the kitchen and the dining area.

The stove & fridge side of the kitchen. There is a cabinet above the microwave, and above the fridge.

In the spirit of full disclosure... my kitchen does not look this good right now. I haven't finished moving some of the decluttered items to the garage yet, and the counters are currently more cluttered than the cabinets... it happens. But this is approximately what it will look like again when I finish. Except that the crock-pot does not belong on the counter at all... but it is still there for now.

I think we'll start with the lower cabinets on this post. That includes most of the cookware and dishes. This first cabinet is the lower one closest to the kitchen table. This is where we store all our plates, bowls, cups and leftover containers, and most of our mixing bowls. Basically... it's the plastic cupboard. Everything is plastic because we have 6 very small children, and we store these low so the kids can help set the table and unload the dishwasher easier.

Before 

After

This cabinet didn't need too much work. I decided to donate the wooden lazy susan. We haven't used it in over two years, because it doesn't fit on our table, and now our kids have learned to help each other pass things around the table, so we don't need it as much. The salad spinner moved to a different cabinet. We still have the leftover containers on the top shelf (and several of them were being used when I took this pic), and the back corner still has four mixing bowls that nest pretty well, as well as our red plastic colander that we use for pasta & such.

Above the plates & cups is the utensil drawer. We've had problems with this drawer breaking ever since we moved in... so I need to fix it. When I took the before picture, we had just pulled everything out of the drawer and set it on the counter.

Before 

After

We decided to get rid of our old silverware and only keep one set. We had talked about doing this for a while, and just never got around to it. I just discovered last week that our local women's shelter was asking for silverware donations, so now seemed like the perfect time. The newly dejunked drawer now holds a basket of corn on the cob skewers, a basket of chip clips, the utensil caddy which holds 8 large spoons, 16 small spoons (that's what came with the set!), 8 large forks, 8 small forks, and 8 serrated knifes that don't belong with the set, but that we use for steaks & things. The other baskets hold my measuring spoons, the 8 dinner knives that came with the silverware set, two serving spoons (one slotted) and the ice cream scoop, my cheese knife and the vegetable peeler.

The next cabinet over is the large one under the sink. I totally forgot to take an after picture of this one, but here's the before. I didn't do much in here, and didn't get rid of anything... just straightened it. Here's where we keep extra garbage bags, dish soap, dishwasher detergent, foil, saran wrap, wax paper, freezer paper, and my cooktop cleaner.

Next to the under-sink cabinet is the dishwasher, then one more narrow cabinet between the dishwasher and the wall.

Before

After

This cabinet actually made me laugh. I took the before picture, then I pulled everything out to figure out what to dejunk, and realized I really had already cut back to my minimums... so the after picture looks nearly identical. I decided to pull everything out again and lay it out so you could more easily see what I have kept.

I have: one light baking sheet, two dark baking sheets (identical and stacked together), one mini-muffin pan, one ancient cupcake pan, one wire cooling rack, three cutting boards, and across the top, two pie tins and three loaf pans. You can probably tell from this how much I actually bake. :) The only other thing in the cabinet is the wire rack for my round baking stone, which for some reason doesn't fit in this cabinet.

Above this cabinet is a small drawer.

For some reason, I forgot to take an after picture of this drawer too. Here's where we keep all the baby bibs, and the extra sponges & kitchen rags.

That concludes the sink side of the lower cabinets.

On the stove/fridge side the first cabinet between the wall and the stove has a drawer above it too.

Here's the before picture... pretty sad. This drawer is supposed to hold the hot pads and the kitchen towels. Unfortunately, the kitchen towels are in the clean laundry pile that I am procrastinating getting to... so the drawer is currently empty. There was no point in taking an after picture. :)

Before 

Midway through.

This cabinet below the towel drawer took a bit longer, because it also ended up including extra things from elsewhere in the kitchen. Midway through you can see the round baking stone on the far left, the air-popper and popping corn at the back, and the blender in front.

This is a pile of stuff that I dejunked just from this one cabinet. The food chopper we just didn't use. The popcorn buckets we didn't end up liking (they held too much popcorn, spilled too easy, and were not easy for little hands to get popcorn out of). The KitchenAid attachment didn't come in as handy as I'd hoped. The tiny waffle iron has been replaced with a bigger, and more functional one, and the black plastic cover thing is for a cheese grater that we already got rid of because it broke.

Before 

After

Up next is the drawer to the right of the stove. This is our spatula drawer. I mentioned this drawer in a previous post, showing that it doesn't have to be perfectly organized. Unfortunately, the drawer was starting to break the 80% rule, and it was time to be purged. Most of the gadgets in this drawer are still used, but not on a regular basis. Anything that wouldn't be used at least once a month I moved to a plastic bin.

Then the plastic bin was put on the shelf of the previous cabinet.

After

The other things I put back into this cabinet are my rolling pin, and my KitchenAid mixer (the bowl for it was in the dishwasher at the time).

Before

After

Two more drawers to go! Under the spatula drawer we have two deeper drawers that I use to store my pots & sauce-pans. I decided to move the aprons out of this drawer, because they were just making things difficult. I had two spoon-rests on the bottom of the drawer and I asked my husband if we really needed them, since we hadn't used them in a while. He told me he had been looking for one because he wanted to use one, but hadn't known where it was... HA. My bad. So, we chose one spoon-rest, and donated the other. Now the drawer is uncluttered enough that he can find the spoon-rest. I also have a wok and a large pot, each with a lid, and a strainer.

This last drawer didn't need any decluttering or reorganizing. It has looked pretty much the same since we moved in a year and a half ago. I have two sauce pans, one deep, the other shallow. The shallow one also has the steamer in it, and a lid, the deep one has a lid along with a tinier sauce pan, with it's own lid. These pans only fit in this drawer in one way, and it's the only place in the kitchen I have to store them, so we just make sure they get put away where they belong every time.

I almost forgot the last space in the lower half of the kitchen. This is the drawer under the stove. It also didn't really have a before & after because I didn't have anything to get rid of from here. I have three frying pans, a red silicon vented pan cover (because my medium sized frying pan doesn't have a lid that fits it), and my waffle iron/griddle/sandwich maker.

Tomorrow I'll cover the upper cabinets!

Good Enough

I have a confession. I have a character flaw that I have been working on correcting for several years.

I am a perfectionist.

This probably comes as no surprise to those who know me, especially close family members. But I willingly admit it now, and that is the first step in correcting this flaw, right?

Now, before we go further, I would like to clarify something. Being perfect is not necessarily a bad thing. After all, we have been commanded to be perfect, even as our Father in Heaven is perfect (Matthew 5:48). But there are two problems with being a perfectionist:

1. Perfectionists often procrastinate because they don't want to start a project if they aren't sure they can finish it perfectly.
2. Perfectionists get consumed in a project, and continue to try to perfect things long after the benefits of perfecting the project have past. 

Procrastination Fear
In the bible, the parable of the talents tells the story of three servants who were each given a sum of money and told to do what he could with it (Matthew 25). The servants who received 5 and 2 talents each worked hard and doubled their Lord's money. The servant who received only one talent must have been a perfectionist. He was so fearful of losing his one talent that he hid it and did nothing at all.

When the Lord returned and reckoned with the servants, the two who had doubled the money were praised: "Well done, thou good and faithful servant." But the servant who had hid the money in fear was rebuked: "Thou wicked and slothful servant." Even if we can't do things perfectly, we should still make an effort to do something.

Keep Moving
The point of the childhood game of "Hot & Cold" is to find a hidden object by following the clues "hotter" and "colder." One key lesson we can learn from this game is that it is impossible to find what we are looking for by standing still. Often, when we work to downsize and organize our life, we may find ourselves further from our goals. That's okay. This feedback is essential to finding what we are actually looking for, and we will often need to move in the wrong direction first, so that we can discover that it is, in fact, the wrong direction for us.

Economics of Organization
I already admitted to being a perfectionist, and now I will also admit that I am a bit of a numbers nerd. One of my favorite classes my freshman year in college was economics. The most applicable to life lesson I learned from that course was the concept of marginal cost & marginal benefit. In simple terms this means that at some point the extra cost of more work, will be more than the extra benefit gained from that work.

In organizing, this means that at some point, the energy required to further organize, or to maintain a high level of organization is more than the energy or stress saved by organizing. In some cases, the energy required to maintain "perfect" organization actually causes more stress.

Example: girls' hair accessories. Potentially, I could buy some nice drawer organizers, and have one section for hair rubberbands, one for bows, one for headbands, one for flowers, etc. This wouldn't take me very long to actually sort and organize. However, my girls don't care. If I insisted on keeping it organized it would only add to the stress in our house, and cause more contention. And then it would be a waste of money to buy the organizers.

Organize Until it's Good Enough, Then Stop. 
Instead of stressing over keeping the hair accessories "perfectly organized," we have chosen to simply make sure they all stay in the same drawer. The same principle can be applied to our toys. We have two toy bins for "cars & trains." At one point, one of my children wanted to sort these into "cars" and "trains" and spent quite a while separating them and telling all of her siblings that one of the train table drawers was just for "trains" and the other was for "cars." The sorted toys stayed sorted for about 10 minutes.

For a more adult example. In our kitchen, we have a drawer for spatulas & large spoons & other random handheld kitchen gadgets. This particular drawer itself is not organized in any way. Everything that belongs in that drawer is simply thrown in there. Why? Because it works. As long as the drawer is following the 80% rule, there is no point stressing over placing the spatula on the left side of the drawer, and the can opener on the right side.

Also, on the minimalist side of things, purge until it's good enough, then stop. I could get rid of all but one sauce pan in my kitchen. It would be possible. But minimizing that drastically would cause more stress as I tried to only cook one-pot dishes, or pre-cooked rice and then steamed the veggies. The point of this blog, is to end up with less stress, and less work if possible. If keeping a full set of pots and pans will make cooking dinner less stressful... then I'm going to keep my full set. :)

If It Works, Don't Mess With It.
After reading through several of my past posts, and seeing pictures of how little we have of some things, I know several of you have thought that there is no way that would work in your family. That's okay! If your current method of storing, playing with, and picking up toys is working, then don't spend the energy to change it! If your current stockpile of fabric for sewing projects makes you happy, don't get rid of it! Don't change things that are working for you.

However, when you notice something is not working, when it's causing stress and frustration, that's when it's time to make a change. That's when it's time to try something different. Maybe the something different will take you in the wrong direction, and you'll feel "colder." In that case, it's time to try something else, gradually getting "warmer" until you find something that works. Then when you find something that works, use it until it doesn't work anymore, and then change it again. Don't worry about finding the "perfect" method, because it doesn't exist.

Challenge #2 - Craft Supplies

Well, I made a decision. After pondering what I truly LOVE, I have determined that while I enjoy sewing quilts and blankets and other flat projects, but I don't enjoy sewing clothing, costumes, or other items that have more than 2 dimensions. If I have time to sew, I want to spend it sewing things I enjoy. I would rather buy or borrow a Halloween costume than spend my rare spare time sewing one.

Knowing this, it's time to purge again! This time, I can sort through my sewing & craft supplies and pass on anything that doesn't fit with my LOVE.

Step 1 - The Gathering
Due to space issues, I have been storing my craft & sewing supplies in various locations throughout the house. First step is to gather them.

I found 8 file boxes of fabric & other supplies in the garage, several plastic bins in the front hall closet (on my sewing desk), and the kids' art & craft bins from their toy rotation. Also pictured here are two empty diaper boxes I brought to collect donations, as well as some garbage bags to collect garbage and some fabric donations. After I took this picture, I remembered one more file box of yarn as well as a bag of poly-fiberfill.

Step 2 - Sorting
I went through the fabric boxes pretty quickly, pulling out the fabric I knew I wasn't going to use. A lot of it was given to me, and is not my style anyway. A good portion was fabric meant for apparel, and would not be good for blankets or quilts.

The hardest thing for me to finally decide to get rid of was a box of fleece. I ended up calling my mom for support and our thought process went something like this:
-What could fleece be used for? What kind of project might I do someday that would use the fleece?
-I could use it to make soft fleece hats, or maybe puppets, but those are more 3D projects, which I have already determined I don't enjoy.
-I could use it to make soft blankets, but since it's mostly leftovers from previous projects, there aren't large pieces... it would have to be a pretty creative patchwork project, which I'd rather not deal with.
-I might be able to piece a cute baby blanket with it, but the colors I have are not really baby colors, and frankly, the colors are not my favorites anyway... they are just the colors I needed for the particular project I used them for.
-If I decide someday that I want to make a pieced fleece blanket, I will probably go out and buy more fleece in the colors that I want/need, so keeping this particular box of fleece will not help me.
-And besides, I have WAY too many projects on my list to be creating more projects just to get some use out of the fleece.
-It's time to pass the fleece on to someone who might have a need for it, or more time than I to do something with it.

After sorting through various other craft bins I ended up with a box of give aways that included ribbon scraps I didn't even like, a scrapbook calendar that I never touched (and I would prefer to scrapbook digitally), as well as a box of patterns for costumes & other things that I don't anticipate ever having the time or desire to sew.

And, of course, I ended up with a pile of garbage. I didn't empty this garbage before I started, so not all of this is from my purge, but a lot of it is. Also, in this picture you can get a glimpse of the freshly labeled craft bins on the shelves of my sewing table.

Step 3 - Organizing What's Left
I ended up keeping 4 boxes of supplies that went back to the garage. The best part of this though, was that every box followed the 80% rule, so I didn't have to tape any of them shut!

One box of "home decor" fabrics that I actually liked, and might use to make throw pillows or something (flat projects!).
One box of yarn & knitting looms.
One box of batting (remember, I like quilting)
One box of "miscellaneous" which includes fabric for some projects that I just can't get rid of, like extra material to make more matching Christmas stockings in case we have more children.

Missing from this picture are the kids' arts & crafts bins. As I was sorting through my supplies, I gave some of the unneeded items to the kids, so they can do fun projects with them.

I also reorganized the remaining craft supplies and relabeled the plastic bins they are in. On my sewing desk are two bins labeled "velcro" and "glue." The glue bin includes tacky craft glue, school glue, and my hot glue gun. Also on the desk is a bin with extra paint supplies for when the kids' art bin runs out.

Under the desk two of the stripy boxes contain quilting fabric, and the third contains patterns. There are also 5 plastic bins labeled: Sewing machine hardware, surger thread, sewing machine thread, snaps buttons zippers hooks, and ribbons and trim.

Step 4 - Putting it All Back
I can't just leave everything out in the school room, or we'd never get any school done. :) So, it's time to move the rest. This is where I put everything as I finished with it, then I put things away after I took the pictures. :)

All these boxes are empty! I love keeping file boxes because I love the uniformity of shelves full of them. So, I moved these to the garage for when I need them again.

Here's the final donations. One large black bag of fabric, one smaller white bag full of fleece, one box of random craft supplies, and one box of patterns. I let my mother go through the box of patterns before donating it, and she took a few from the box, but also added a few of her own. These donations are still sitting in my garage, but they'll be out of the house soon!

And of course, the garbage. This bag went straight to the garbage can in the garage, and of course, I put a new bag in the basket. :)

The four boxes of supplies I'm keeping went back on the shelves in the garage, and the bins that were left on my sewing desk went back into the hall closet. I'll share pictures of those locations in later posts. :)

Challenge #1 - Toiletries Part 2

So, now that it's time to put everything away, here's where it all belongs:

Master Bathroom Closet

There is a vacuum packed space saver bag of blankets, another bag of pillows, a bag of fabric and batting for some quilts I'm working on, and a hula hoop that is also for a sewing project I'm in the middle of. This part of the closet also tends to hold gifts that I need to wrap for birthdays or Christmas. Since that season just ended, it's pretty empty right now.

On the other side of the closet, is the gift wrap. This is why I put the rest of the wrapping supplies in the top drawer of the toiletry drawers.

And here's the set of drawers back where they belong.

Now for the rest of the stuff.

Master Bathroom

The master vanity. The only things that belong on the vanity are our toothbrushes, toothpaste, and a bar of hand soap. We usually have a bottle of liquid hand soap, but this bar was handmade by a co-worker of my husband, so we put the bottle away with the extra liquid soap and we're using the bar first. Honestly, I would prefer to keep the toothbrushes & toothpaste in a drawer too, but my husband prefers them to "air out", and they are too tall to keep upright in the drawer. You can also see the potty seat kept next to the toilet, and a corner of the bathroom scale.

The top left drawer of the vanity holds my make-up tin, the jewelry I actually wear on occasion (the black case in the back), my hair accessories, deodorant, lotion, and the green bucket in front holds a nail file, a comb, nail clippers, and our toddler's toothbrush.

The bottom left drawer holds my curling iron, straightener, blow dryer and my brush. The combs tend to get lost in this drawer, and my brush gets hair on everything if it's in any other drawer, so this is where we keep it.

The vanity cabinet holds bath towels and hand towels. We currently have 4 bath towels and 2 hand towels. One hand towel is currently hung above the counter, and the other was just put in the wash. Two bath towels are hung on the rod, and one is in the laundry, so there is only one in the cabinet right now.

The top right drawer holds feminine products, which can be reached easily while sitting on the toilet, and a book of random math facts that my husband got as a Christmas present and thought would be fun bathroom reading. We started keeping this in the bottom drawer, but our toddler likes to walk away with it, so we moved it up higher.

And the bottom right drawer holds extra toilet paper. 

On the other side of the bathroom is the toilet & shower/tub. Here you can see the two towels on the rod, not hung perfectly, because we are not perfect. :)

In one corner of the tub we keep our razors, where the kids cannot reach them if they just walk into the bathroom. The puff hanging from the handle is mostly used for those random occasions when I get to take a bath and pamper myself.

And in the other corner, we keep our shampoo, bar soap, and my feminine wash. That's all we use in the shower, so that's all we need out on a daily basis.

Kids' Bathroom

We are blessed to have a fairly large bathroom, with LOTS of storage. Ironically, I can't find a whole lot to store in the bathroom, so a lot of the space is empty. :) The only things that belong on the kids' bathroom counter are the hand soap, and a tub of baby wipes. 

In the left cabinet, under the sink, we keep the swim towels, and hand towels. These are primarily used for guests, since we don't have any other guest towels, and the kids don't use the hand towels.

The first of the three vanity drawers holds the kids' toothbrushes and toothpaste.

The second drawer holds all the girls' hair accessories, plus brushes & combs. Again, the kids don't keep this organized, so I don't bother organizing it. It's a shallow enough drawer, and we purge it frequently when things break, so we don't usually have a problem finding what we need.

The bottom drawer is currently empty. We used to keep extra hair accessories in here, but we don't have that many anymore. 

The cabinet on the right, under the counter holds spare toilet paper, extra baby wipe tubs, and diapers. This cabinet has been known to hold piles of diapers, with all sizes mixed together, but it happens to be fairly organized at the moment, since we are only using one size of diaper, and we just finished one pack and brought in another.

Above the counter we have a mirrored medicine cabinet type thing with three sections. One of the twins broke the middle section, so it's currently just open shelving. The only thing in the cabinet behind the left mirror is the sink stopper. The kids were filling & overflowing the sink a little too often, so we just took this out. 

In the open shelving in the middle section, we keep a spray bottle of water that is helpful when doing the girls' hair.

The cabinet behind the right mirror holds guest body wash & lotions (middle shelf), air freshener, vaseline, an altoid box filled with q-tips, baby powder and diaper creams. I have often used the counter space in this bathroom for changing diapers, so having the diapers & wipes under the counter, and the creams & such in this cabinet is quite convenient.

At the end of the bathroom we have the toilet, with a cabinet above it, the tub/shower which includes a tub toy container that is currently not following the 80% rule, and the hooks that hold 6 kids towels. The kids each have one towel, in a different color, and their towels are always kept on their hooks, or in the laundry, so they never need a place to be stored while folded.

What you can't see clearly in this picture is the soap & such. Behind the tub toys there is a bottle of shampoo, on the front tub deck is a bar of soap, on the window sill is a bottle of conditioner that is only used by my girls when I help them, and a bottle of baby shampoo that my younger kids like to pour into the tub to make bubbles, so I had to move it so it wouldn't get wasted. 

The cabinet above the toilet is completely empty because I have no idea what I would actually store in there. I've thought about keeping extra toilet paper in here, but it doesn't fit while in the packaging, so that's an extra step just to put it in, and the kids can't reach it, so they couldn't help put it there, or get it down.

Your Turn!
Now I challenge you to tackle your toiletries. You will obviously have different needs than I, and different storage options. If you haven't done this recently, or if you've held onto things and just tried to organize them, it may take a while, and you may need to just toss a lot.

Remember, don't live by guilt. If you're not going to use something, or if it's not your favorite, don't keep it.
And please, let me know how it goes. Happy Purging!