How to Organize Bathroom Drawers and Cabinets

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Tired of messy bathroom drawers and stuffed cabinets? You’re not alone. Many of us struggle with the daily chaos of toiletries, cosmetics, and personal care items. In this post, I’ll show you how to create an organized bathroom space that looks good and works even better.

How to Organize Bathroom Drawers 

We have two full bathrooms in our house – one that I use which is the small bathroom (the master) and the larger bathroom that both my husband and boys share. 

As you can probably guess, my toiletry collections consist mostly of makeup, hair, and skincare products. Full disclosure, my vanity already has drawers with built-in organizers that help with beauty products, but they haven’t been enough to really keep my product stash under control. 

Bathroom drawers and cabinets can quickly become cluttered and disorganized, making it difficult to find what you need when you need it. However, with a little effort and some smart bathroom organization strategies, I have found ways to transform my messy drawers and cabinets into functional areas. 

This is a full process of the basic steps to declutter, clean, organize, and set up your bathroom drawers in a great way for functional living. 

Declutter Your Drawers

When it comes to bathroom storage for drawers and cabinets, it’s important to first understand your storage needs. This will help you determine what items you need to keep and what items you can get rid of. 

The first step is to thoroughly declutter and sort through all your items. especially if it’s a small space you want to limit how much you are storing. This means taking everything out of your drawers and cabinets and sorting it into piles to keep, donate, and toss. 

By taking the time to declutter and sort your belongings, you’ll be able to create a more streamlined and efficient storage system that makes it easy to find what you need when you need it.

Sort Your Products

After you’ve identified your essential items, it’s time to sort out any unnecessary items. These may include expired products, duplicates, or items that you simply don’t use anymore. Here are a couple of things to look for while sorting out unnecessary items:

• Expiration dates: Get rid of any products that have expired or are close to expiring.
• Duplicates: If you have multiple products that serve the same purpose, keep only one and get rid of the rest. You want to be sure you have enough room for your favorites.
• Consider donating: If you have unopened products that you don’t use, consider donating them to a local shelter or charity.

Remember, the key to organizing your bathroom drawers and cabinets is to first understand your storage needs. By identifying essential items and sorting out unnecessary items, you’ll quickly know your storage needs and be on your way to a more organized functional bathroom. It only took me about 15 minutes to sort through everything, throw out the duds and reorganize what I was keeping. Not a bad pay-off for a quarter of an hour’s effort!

Clean Your Drawers

Once the drawers and cabinets are empty and decluttered. Take some time to deep clean them. Get into the cracks of the drawers and cabinets where dirt and grime build-up. This time investment of deep cleaning and organization is intended for a full reset on your drawers and bathroom cabinets. 

I suggest you use a damp cloth first to wipe out any dust or dirt. Then follow it with your favorite all-purpose cleaner to sanitize. Be sure you keep the drawers and cabinets open to fully dry. You don’t want to trap any moisture in them. 

Establish Your Storage Needs

When organizing bathroom drawers and cabinets, it is important to sort and categorize items in a way that makes them easy to store and use. I suggest you go through your freshly sorted items and organize them by different sizes or by usage. This will help you visualize the types of storage containers you need. 

1. Sort items into groups

• Small items: bobby pins, cotton swabs, hair elastics, nail clippers
• Medium items: travel-sized toiletries, makeup brushes, sunscreen
• Large items: hair dryers, curling irons, bath towels

2. Sort groups into similar items to store together

• Hair products: shampoo, conditioner, styling products
• Makeup: foundation, blush, eyeshadow, mascara
• Toiletries: soap, lotion, hand sanitizer, tissues

Once you have all your items grouped and sorted into which drawers or cabinets you are using, then you need to figure out what style of container you will be using for the items. Drawer organizers are incredible for small items, oral hygiene drawers, and skincare. Lazy susans and nesting drawers are great for your cabinets. 

Sometimes you can cut down on space by transferring products into acrylic canisters. I use acrylic canisters everywhere in my home. I have them in the kitchen for baking supplies, in the playroom for the kids’ markers and crayons and now all the bathrooms have them, too!

By sorting and categorizing bathroom items, you can create a more organized and functional space. Whether you choose to sort by frequency of use, size, or type, the key is to find a system that works for you and stick to it.

Measure and Shop

Once you know the styles of drawer organizers, clear containers, and trays, measure the spaces that they will go into. I like to measure the full drawer or cabinet space, length X width. When I am at the store, I will set out the trays in a way to make sure they will fit. 

There are also adjustable trays and cabinet drawer setups. This is honestly the easiest hack if you have them available to you, especially for under the cabinet. The adjustable drawers are amazing because their height can be changed to accommodate the height of products and the height of the cabinet opening. 

Lazy Susans are also your best friend as they can make accessing products easy. Instead of bumping products over while reaching behind them, turning the lazy Susan gives you direct access to what you want. 

Bathroom Organizing Essentials

Ready to organize your bathroom once and for all? Here’s the essentials you’ll need to get the job done!

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7

Organize Each Storage Area by Use

Categorize each area:

• Counter Tray: cotton balls and q tips for easy access
• Top drawer: your daily basis products like oral hygiene, face care products, and makeup 
• Second Drawer: hair supplies like hair dryer, flat iron, curling iron, etc. 
• Third Drawer (if you have it): Back up products 
• Larger Items into cabinets: first aid, travel extras, tall products, shaving needs, etc. 

While my bathroom vanity drawers already have drawers with built-in organizers, I needed to add some smaller organizers to make the space the most efficient it could be for me.

In the other bathroom, there are no drawers under the bathroom sink (that’s a faux drawer cabinet door!), it’s just a big empty space in which all the bathroom products got dumped. All of my husband’s shaving products, first aid supplies, Epsom salts, bubble baths, hand soap, extra shampoo for guests, and then extra dental supplies are all stored in here.

I had to get creative in organizing this space, so I used my favorite clear stackable drawers and filled them with the first aid supplies as well as the vast amount of travel-sized toiletries that I discovered after emptying out the cabinet.

The Epsom salts were poured into a large acrylic canister (acrylic means it won’t smash!), and extra soap/shampoo for guests got relegated to the back of the cabinet in one of The Home Edit All Purpose Bins.

Cotton buds were taken out of the box and put into another smaller acrylic canister and then, last but not least, I used one of the awesome T.H.E divided turntables for all my husband’s products.

The divided turntable is the perfect solution when you’re short on space because it’s just like a lazy susan – fill each section with whatever and then rotate to reach it. I love it! We have this one set up with a shaving section, a dental section, cleansers/hair gel, and finally washcloths.

If you have more vertical space (our plumbing was in the way) there’s also a 2-tier turntable that’s equally awesome.

As part of The Home Edit collection, there are a few sets of labels that you can use to identify everything in your home. I picked the set that worked best for the bathroom and used them so that my husband has no reason for items to not be returned to the right place! 

Make a Routine 

Make it a habit to clean the drawers and cabinets about once a week. It truly will only take you about 5 minutes but will save you time in the long run because it will prevent any buildup of dirt and grime. Also, it means you have to reset your products and put away items that get shoved in the drawers that don’t belong there. Here’s a quick routine that will become second nature if you get into the practice of doing it once a week: 

• Remove: take out any extra items that don’t belong in the bathroom, they all pile up throughout the week.
• Empty: take everything out of the drawers and bathroom organizers. 
• Clean: wipe down everything with a cloth and your favorite all-purpose spray. Especially the makeup drawer as this collects a lot of extra dirt.
• Reset: replace all your products back into the plastic containers.
• Inventory: make a list of any products you are out of or low on. 
• Restock: add those products back into your drawers and cabinets. 

Final Thoughts

Maintaining a clean and organized bathroom will help you start and end your day calmly. With very little effort to get it all organized and equally as little effort to maintain it, you can ensure your bathroom is never a place to cause you extra stress. Life is too stressful as it is, our homes can be a place of calm when we set ourselves up for success by simplifying our systems and keeping ourselves organized.