Ever find yourself standing in your bathroom and realising, “this room is tiny!”. It is quite odd that one of the most functional spaces in the home is usually the smallest, and yet, everyone seems to get along fine with their bathrooms. I’m almost 100% certain that if I magically appeared in your bathroom when you’re there (don’t worry, I’ll knock first) and asked you if it was the perfect bathroom, you’d have at least a handful of things you want to change. Space in your bathroom is always needed.
If you read the recent guide on where best to put furniture in your bedroom, you might be inspired to do the same with other rooms around the home. In this post, let’s look at the average bathroom and what any of us can do to squeeze a few extra inches out of it. I can’t promise you’ll suddenly have a palatial bathroom, but I can guarantee you’ll notice a little extra space here and there.
De-clutter EVERYTHING
Who is guilty of leaving shampoo bottles on the ground when they’re in the shower? And who has a bathroom where the bleach and cleaning wipes are tucked beside the toilet because there’s seemingly nowhere else to put them?
For a room we get clean in, the bathroom is often the messiest space at home. In my case, everyone is guilty of leaving things on top of the cabinet before jumping in the shower. All that clutter is the first thing you want to tackle, and it is oh so easy to sort out. The cheapest solution is to get a nice looking basket you can pop beside the shower or bath for people to leave their washes and whatnot in. I’m also a big fan of having a floating shelf in the shower if you can, rather than those baskets you can’t fit half your things in.
Railing Away On The Walls
Here is a situation I am almost certain you’ll have come across in a friend’s house.
You go to use their bathroom, and when you’ve finished washing your hands, you look around for a towel. Because the bathroom is so small, you can’t see a towel hook hanging anywhere, but you can see two or three towels all hanging over the edge of the bath. You don’t know what is clean and what isn’t, so you take a gamble and hope you’ve just wiped your hands on a clean towel.
If you got memories flooding back just thinking about that and know your bathroom is just as bad, it is time to get a towel rail. Towel rails are great at helping use wall space. By flipping the traditional radiator on its side, not only do you have more space to hang clean towels, but you’re also gaining back valuable inches of wall space from the waist down.
They’re not even that dear these days. I can attest that some of Trade Radiators’ heated towel rails will do the job at a good price and get delivered with all the bits and bobs in the box to hang one on a wall.
Hook it high!
If you can’t get a towel rail put in, and aren’t using the space above your radiator, opt for the incredibly cheap (and smart) option of getting hooks hung high. A higher hook will give you somewhere to keep bath towel separate from hand towels. I would recommend that you do the rather odd thing of getting the whole family in the bathroom and ask them to see how high everyone needs a hook to be. You don’t want something so high that everyone can’t reach it, or so low that it causes towels and robes to drape over your radiator; a big no-no as you never want to block hot air coming out the top of the radiator.
High Above The Door
One final tip that I absolutely love. If you have around a foot or so of wall between the top of your door and the ceiling, pop a shelf on it. You can keep guest towels, cleaning stuff, or anything you like.
It is an ingenious storage solution and will work perfectly if you don’t already have a linen closet. And if you are reading this with a tiny bathroom at home, I recommend reading this post on designing a small bathroom.