2013-03-20 GID: Bathroom Chaos

This room has been in total chaos for several months now; really for the last year since I can count on one hand how long the room has stayed clear. My mom has A-LOT of things; really they are everywhere and even when I think I'm making progress she'll find something to clutter up the space. It's very frustrating even for the non-neat freak that I am and I am a firm believer that things should have a home so they go back to it every time. My mom just put's it where ever there is space and sometimes she just shoves thing into a space - like the fridge. Even with things labeled she still makes her own space for items. Again, very frustrating. 

On Sunday I really just had enough of this room, enough of walking past piles of stuff and leaping over things so I can get to my washer and dryer so I took charge of clearing out the room. My mom is great at avoiding cleaning out clutter; she'll always find an excuse why she hasn't gotten to it and to her it's always legit.

for the most part my mom and I get along, it's really just the stuff and clutter that makes up most of our quarrels, but as you can see from the before photo you can understand why I quarrel over clutter.  

While cleaning out I cleared out the white plastic shelf in the bottom left photo& 2 others that you can't see, because there is so much in the room.  The two boxes under the laundry basket in the bottom right photo is mostly items that need to be listed on Amazon - Books and DVD's which have no place being the bathroom.  I moved them out into the hallway in hopes that my mom will sort through them this week.    Plus, we've moved a bookshelf to my 3rd floor to house our Amazon listings so we can find them when they sell so I know she'll be more likely to take care of the now.  

She had about 6 tubes of toothpaste, 5 deodorants, about 4 cups of liquid eye drop packets and another few cups of the liquid bottles,  8 chapsticks,  6 moisturizers, and 5 toe nail clippers just to name a few things she had hiding in there.  I took all the extra items and they will be moved to the basement where we have several shoe boxes that house our extra toiletries. 

There is also a tall hamper on wheels that you can see below in the before pictures.  It was being housed in front of the tub.  It works much better in it's new location where it's out of the way and easy to move when we need to get to the washer and dryer.  

Alright, finally it's cleared out.........Yeah!!!  I can walk right in and not trip or anything and I can easily get to my washer and dryer.  Goal achieved. 

As you can see it's still a huge difference with how clean and sorted everything is, but there is still work to be done with making it more like home.   Like painting all the walls.  I had painted the toilet wall area a pretty blue, but I think I want to change it out and all the other walls are still the original yellow.  I would like to put some type of shelving above the sinks and eliminate the odd shaped wire shelves my mom had installed behind my back.   I'd also like to see the base cabinet go at some point.  It's just way to big for the space and not practical.  Really what I would like is a linen closet, that would be fantastic, but that's still a bit out of my league to attempt. 

I left some things for my mom to do since this is technically her bath space.  I use the one on the 3rd floor so ALL of this stuff is hers.  There are a few organizers I left onto of the base cabinet next to the toilet, and the items behind the door and on the door I didn't touch.  I also asked her to do a deep clean the bathroom while all the surfaces are cleared.  I also added some things in her tub like extra  shampoos/conditioners for her to choose ones she wanted to use now and the rest will go downstairs with the extra's.