Any of my fellow Londoners will agree: most flats have no space for unnecessary products and clutter. So don’t ask me how our bathroom caddy became such a state.
As much as I’d like to blame my lockdown spending habits entirely, I know, deep down, that’s simply not true. I’ve always had an affinity for building ‘new and improved’ routines for skincare, haircare and beauty. While I don’t necessarily believe that the more products included, the better, I can’t help but add new products to my routine without abandon. I have a terrible habit of hearing about a product, researching it and mentally talking myself into how it’s going to change my life, resulting in a purchase. Usually, this ends with an array of products that do mostly the same thing cluttering my already-small bathroom caddy (that I share with J).
Living in a city like London, the flats are small, old (with tons of character!) and not always efficiently planned out. Somehow we lucked out, and our London flat is the largest apartment J and I have lived in. Our two-floor, terraced home is cozy, quaint and one of my most favourite spaces I’ve lived in. It truly feels like home (despite a genuinely rough start). That said, we have more storage than we need and enough space to spend an entire day indoors without crossing paths with one another. This was totally unexpected when we moved to London. While flat hunting, we had set the bar low: expecting to live in our smallest apartment yet without a dishwasher and likely no washing machine. I’m happy to report that our flat exceeded our expectations with two bedrooms (one we use as J’s home office and the guest room), two bathrooms and a lot of efficiently-organised space. I truly believe we only got so lucky because we put an offer on the flat before renovations had even completed (and had to view it a second time due to a very angry carpenter kicking our letting agent out the first time). This also meant we hadn’t seen the finished place before we moved in (!!!).
While our top-floor bathroom is definitely the smaller of the two, it gets the most use due to its close proximity to our bedroom and North American-style shower (the main floor bathroom is much bigger – with a tub! But it uses a handheld shower nozzle).
In a delayed attempt to clear some of the unnecessary clutter in our flat, my most recent organisation project is my bathroom caddy. While I know the post organising our living room bookshelves was controversial (click here to read that post), this caddy is meant to only hold our everyday/routine essentials. I’m hopeful that by tidying up these shelves, our morning routines will become more streamlined and our bathroom will look tidier (considering this caddy takes up a large per cent of it).
Currently overflowing with expired, mostly-empty products, I’ve cleared this caddy of any unnecessary bulk, saying adieu to beloved empties I wasn’t quite ready to accept their completion (that’s you, Kiehl’s Midnight Recovery Concentrate).
While there is still an obnoxious number of products left (enough that my mom and sister are likely rolling their eyes at my collection), I’m looking forward to refining my routines while also reducing waste (and not letting a single drop of product expire). In organising my caddy, I’ve arranged my products according to my every-day non-neogitables alongside products with nearing expiry dates to ensure I’m being as efficient as possible in dwindling my product count.
The top shelf includes our daily routine essentials and I’ve added products with upcoming expiry dates to ensure we’re reducing waste and using up these products before dipping into something new.
After test-driving our new and improved (aka organised) caddy, I’ll do a post outlining my favourite products and new additions to my beauty routine. Stay tuned!
Before After
Krista Thurrott 