Organizing Under the Bathroom Sink

With my March Spring Cleaning project, the area I was least looking forward to tackling was under my bathroom sink. When we moved into the house, I just kind of dumped all my stuff there and planned on organizing it later, and then I just never got around to it. So for two years, it looked like this:

Yeah. Not good.
But after about an hour, I had it looking like this:

MUCH BETTER!

The first thing I did was take everything out.

There was a lot of stuff under there. I buy toiletry items a bunch at a time when they go on sale, so I have a lot of "extra" shampoo, deodorant, etc. 

I cleaned out the cabinet and lined the bottom with shelf liner, which gave me a nice blank slate.

I knew I needed more surface area than the bottom of the cabinet allowed, so I bought this awesome under-the-sink mesh shelf thing from Bed Bath and Beyond:

And then it was just a matter of throwing away things like old lotion and stuff I don't use, and putting everything back in! 

The top left is my "face" shelf. All of my extra make-up goes in the little crate (my everyday stuff lives in a drawer, but this is all the stuff I don't use on a daily basis), and face moisturizer and sunscreen live there too.

The top right is my "nails" shelf. All of my nail polishes, files, etc. go in the blue box, and nail polish remover behind it.

The bottom left holds my travel toiletry bags, and some hair products (I put the stuff I use most often in the front):

Having a pre-packed toiletry bag is a godsend for me. We travel fairly often, so this saves me so much time! I keep these items stocked and ready to go in a travel bag:


My liquids and gels stay in a Ziploc so I don't have to worry about it if we're flying:

I keep the smaller bag inside of a larger one (if I'm going on a longer trip and need to add a few things, I just dump all the contents of the smaller one into the larger one), along with my jewelry organizer pouch. When we travel, I just throw in my brush and glasses and we're ready! 

The bottom right side is where all my "extras" live. Deodorant, facewash, shampoo, shaving cream, razor blades, etc. Now I can easily see how many I have of something, so I know when I need to start looking for a sale to stock up!

I've been living with the new system for about a month, and it still looks just like those photos! It's so easy to put everything back where it belongs now, and it makes me feel less stressed in the morning when everything is neat and organized under the sink! I can't believe it took me two years to get around to it!