Year of the Clean Person: This April, Create Your Dream Bathroom

Year of the Clean Person is guided yearlong cleaning and organizing project; its focus is on tackling areas or tasks that are often overlooked in daily or weekly cleaning sprees and can be overwhelming when it comes time to rassle them back under control. This month, we’ll be channeling all the good Spring Cleaning energy that April delivers unto us and whipping our bathrooms into wicked shape.

I hope everyone is feeling well-rested! March’s YoCP task—making the bed every day—was a relatively easy, if terribly important, task; but brace yourself for April’s assignment, because it’s a biggie. Creating your dream bathroom can include replacing caulk and broken toilet seats; brightening up grout; washing the walls (YUP. We’re gonna wash some walls, darn it!); installing better lighting; purging medicine cabinets and makeup drawers and under-sink areas. It’s dirty, physical work. But having a bathroom that is clean and organized will be well worth your efforts.

Because the bathroom reclamation is such a beast, it’s so important (so, so, so, so, so important) to do your advanced planning and to be realistic about how much you intend to do this month. It’s way better to take on only one task and see it to completion than it is to say, “I’m gonna do everything!” and then do nothing or worse, start and then fail to complete, five separate projects. Because then you might make yourself feel bad, and that’s a silly thing to do to yourself. The whole purpose of this year-long exercise is to guide you to making improvements in small measures, so that come December you can look back and say, “Wow, I accomplished a lot of home-related stuff this year and I can see a difference thanks to my efforts!” This is NOT meant to leave you feeling bad about things.

With that said, this month it’s going to be especially important for you to begin your efforts with a list. I know! The dreaded list! But the list will help you hone in on the things that are the highest priority for you, allow you to take those things on first and then determine how many of the lower priority items you realistically feel like taking on. The list is also important because many of these tasks will require specialty tools, products and equipment; making the list will help you sort out what you need before you get going.

Because every bathroom ecosystem is different, this month I won’t be giving you as many clear guided steps to complete the tasks involved in beautifying your bathroom as I did with February’s bookshelf project. Instead, I’ve broken down the things you might decide to tackle and provided information to help support your endeavors. Got things on your mind/list that I didn’t address here? Mention ’em in the comments, maybe someone can offer advice or a helpful link—you are all a great resource for one another!

Purge and clean medicine cabinet, under sink area, drawers

Maybe not all of them though. Maybe all of them?!? It really depends on how much time and patience you have for purging and organizing. I myself have never met an organization project I didn’t love, but I know it can also be messy, dirty, frustrating work—especially the part where you have to dispose of things like that lipstick shade you spent too much money on and still never wear, the three differently sized round brushes you have that various hairstyles over the year have called for, those velcro rollers from the ’90s.

But you know? Those things, if you’re not using them, are taking up space and making your morning routine slower and more frustrating. They’re getting in the way of the curling wand you pull out for fancy Saturday nights on the town. They’ve served their purpose—or in the case of that lipstick shade you spent too much money on and still never wear, have served no purpose at all other than to make you feel bad about a capricious purchase—so bear that in mind when it comes time to consider whether you want to hang onto them or not.

As with any kind of storage purge, the place to start is by taking everything out. Everrrrrrrything. Then clean out the drawer itself, or medicine cabinet, or the area under the sink. All-purpose spray and a sponge or paper towels should be all you need for this, but a Magic Eraser might also be handy. This is especially true for places in which you store makeup, which over time can leave behind stubborn stains.

Then go through your stuff, and don’t be afraid to throw things away. It’s going to be so worth the payoff!