Organizing your Bathroom Accessories with Shelves and Baskets

Do you have old baskets hanging around the house or attic that you're thinking about putting in the yard sale or even in the garbage?

Stop!

You can redecorate those baskets and turn them into useful and attractive storage items. Redecorating the baskets is easy, and they can help make use of wasted space for storage, giving you more room to keep other bathroom items in your cabinets.

Maybe you have some old shelves from yard sale or a previous use in another room. Pick a piece of empty wall space in your bathroom and gear up that creative mind.

Of course, you will probably need to re-paint the shelves before using them. You can choose many different types of paint, including metallics, spray paints, or even stone effects. Just make sure to choose one which will sand up to moisture. If the shelves are damaged, chipped, etc, you may need to sand first, then apply several coats of paint to give a tough, long-lasting surface. After the shelves are dry, give them a good look over and consider - are they too plain or do you want to add something more to them? Stencils, stamps, stripes, transfers, wallpaper borders or stickers can all be used to decorate plain shelves. Just don’t overdo it with too many doo-dads. When choosing your colors and shades, be sure they combine well with your existing bathroom color scheme, either matching, toning or contrasting.

Once the shelves are good and dry, mount them on your wall where you need them. You may want to line them up with existing wall features like windows, doors or cabinets, or to deliberately not make them line up to disguise existing uneven-ness. If you have more than one shelf, you can line them up vertically or horizontally, or stagger them. Make sure that your mounting method is string enough to take the weight of the shelf and of the things you plan to store on it!

Now you have created extra storage and display space, and you need to arrange it in an attractive way. Here again you can be creative using baskets and other containers on the shelves, stacking towels and washcloths in color arrangements, and including small pictures and flower vases. Baskets come in many different sizes, shapes and colors, and you can spray paint them to match or contrast with each other, the shelves and the walls. Baskets made from natural materials are nice to use because they are easy to clean, just wash them with warm soapy water and let them air dry. The moisture in the bathroom is good for them, it helps keep them from drying out. Seagrass baskets have a particularly attractive natural scent of their own.

Make your wall storage system something for people to admire, and be proud of all the hard work you’ve put into it.

Christmas Decorating for your Bathroom

Do you love the Christmas holiday season? If so, maybe you're interested in decorating your home for Christmas. Although you might not have thought about it, did you know that you can decorate your bathroom for Christmas? If it's a new idea to you, you might want to give it some consideration. There are many Christmas decorations that would look great in your bathroom.

If you are searching for an easy but traditional way to jazz up your bathroom for Christmas, you could hang a Christmas picture in the room. Whether that's an elegant framed picture or just a cardboard cutout of Santa or a Christmas tree, you could easily make your bathroom more festive with one simple Christmas picture. Already have pictures in your bathroom? It's your choice whether to leave them up and make the Christmas pictures an addition, or take down the regular pictures until Christmas is over. For the ultimate festive holiday feel, it may be better to focus on only one decorating theme at a time.

Christmas towels and washcloths are another possible way to decorate your bathroom for Christmas. Depending on where you shop, you should be able to find a set compete with matching towels and washcloths. Many are designed as if they were for children, with cartoon-like characters, but it's also possible to find more elegant styles as well. It is possible to find solid colored towels and washcloths that have a more subtle Christmas theme to them, such as a simple snowflake or a small picture of a Santa. Hanging these towels in your bathroom, whether you use them or not, is a great way to bring the Christmas spirit into one of the most used rooms in your home.

Other Christmas decorations are designed especially for the bathroom. These could include soap dishes or soap pumps. It is not hard to find a soap dish that has a Christmas design to it, and the same goes for soap or lotion pump containers. Some of these containers can even be had in the shape of Santa or a Christmas tree. What is nice about these types of Christmas bathroom decorations is that they are usuall quite economical to buy. You can often find a selection of holiday-themed soap dishes or pumps in your local discount or dollar store.

If you are really determined to bring the Christmas spirit into your bathroom, you could go a step further: as well as holiday towels and washcloths, you can also find bathroom sets including window curtains, shower curtains, and as floor mats. While you may think that a Christmas shower curtain is over the top, it all depends on the specific design - and what's wrong with a little "over the top" from time to time, anyway?

These are just a few of the many decorative items that can be used to theme your bathroom for the Christmas holiday season. Have fun with your decorating!

Bathroom Ideas for small bathrooms

Most of the bathrooms you see in shelter magazines are huge. Most of us have small bathrooms. What to do? Make the most of the bathroom you have with some of these ideas...

• Use paint colors to make the room seem light and airy (pale colors, blend wall and ceiling colors, blend wall and fixture colors)
• Use paint colors to make the room seem snug and cosy (jewel tones, dark tones, "suede" finishes, traditional patterns)
• Use murals (wallpaper or paint) to make the room seem to open out into a landscape or other scene... maybe not on the wall opposite the toilet, though!
• Use mirrors to double the apparent size of the room. Be cautious with mirrors on opposite walls; it can be quite startling to see multiples of yourself disappearing into the distance.
• Use compact or dual-purpose fixtures to make more room for other things
• Build storage into the wall stud bays so it takes up less space in the room
• Use a glass shower enclosure that disappears visually

Find more bathroom designs and ideas here.