Last month, I visited my friend Emma, who promptly invited me into her powder room to borrow her curling iron. When I say powder room, I mean literal phone-booth-sized bathroom. Between the oversized builder vanity and the toilet flush-up-against-the-wall, there wasn’t much space to maneuver.
But what bothered me most was how cluttered the room felt, considering how clean it actually was. Cleaning caddy on the floor, spare roll of toilet paper tucked into the corner, curling iron balanced on the toilet tank lid. Low and wide clutter clutter everywhere. “I hate this bathroom,” Emma sighed as she circumvented the wire basket for what felt like the third time. “There’s nowhere to put stuff.” I stared at her barren walls, unable to compute how much vertical space she wasn’t using.
Tall skinny Emma lived in a one-bedroom flat with eight-foot ceilings, yet there wasn’t a shelf in sight above waist level. It was like living in a two-story house and only occupying the first floor. “Remember my first flat?” I asked. “THE bathroom made Emma’s look palatial.” My debut rental had what could only be described as a bathroom cupboard.
You could touch three walls if you stood on the toilet.
Previous tenants did the bare minimum by installing one lone towel bar on the back wall. It took me months of balancing my pile of beauty products on the sink lip to realise that I needed to rethink storage … vertically. …I was sitting at my sister’s kitchen counter, watching her drill in wall shelves after her recent kitchen remodel. Tongue pressed thickly against the roof of my mouth, I eyed all the shiny new shelves.
Skinny shelves for spices. Deep shelves for large kitchen appliances. Even a skinny shelf mounted above the kitchen window, where she planned to grow herbs. “Wait,” I thought. “Why don’t I put shelves in my bathroom?” Lightbulb moments all sound stupid when you rephrase them out loud, but I had officially had mine.
Attempt 1: Fail. It was during this mental exchange that I impulsively bought peel-and-stick shelving from the pound shop and spent the next week waking up to the sound of crashing shampoo bottles at 3 A.M. Bonus lesson: steam and adhesive shelving don’t mix.
Attempt 2: Buy a drill. Like any self-respecting millennial, I asked my younger brother to lend me his spare drill, located three different wall anchors hiding in his toolbox, and drilled three floating shelves at varying heights around my bathroom. One skinny shelf about a foot and a half from the sink, reserved for my daily face stuff.
A wider shelf by the shower, for larger bottles. And one tall shelf, above the toilet, for backup products. It was a game changer.
Not only did I finally have clear counter space again, but the room actually felt twice the size. Attempt 3: Over-the-toilet storage. We’ve all seen the abyss that is above our toilet tank, desperately mocking us with its wasted potential.
After my failed stick-on shelves fiasco, I was intimidated to commit to anything permanent over the toilet. But I found a silver bullet. Or should I say, tall skinny cabinet?
IKEA has tons of options for over-the-toilet storage (Ikea HEMNES series in white is what I bought), but I chose one with a narrow enough profile that it wouldn’t make my bathroom feel closed-off. The narrow shelves are deceiving; it holds a lot more than you think. Extra toilet paper, cleaning supplies, extra towels.
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All the stuff I had crammed into a bulky drawer under my sink was redistributed into category-friendly compartments up top. Decorating fail: installing this beast was a fucking ordeal. The instructions were written in that fancy IKEA conceptual language that only makes sense when you’re actually holding the IKEA shelves in your hands.
Also, I mounted the top shelf bracket upside down on my first attempt. How do you guys do this? My neighbour thinks I have Tourette’s from how many fucks I shouted at my bathroom that Saturday.
Quick pro-tip about over-the-toilet storage: buy something skinny. You’ll notice I say “something” and not “a shelf.” The key to great over-the-toilet storage is making sure it doesn’t look like it’s gonna autumn over every time you flush. Bulky, squat furniture will make your bathroom feel even smaller, but something tall and thin adds vertical lines that draw your eye upward.
Lesson learned when I “borrowed” my mum’s old wooden medicine cabinet to see what the difference would be. Instant cave. Wall mounted?
Organisation hack: I also love wall-mounted storage in the bathroom. A magnetic strip on the inside of my over-the-toilet cabinet holds all my tweezers and nail scissors. I even have a suction cup storage caddy in my shower that actually stays put! (Tip: don’t put too much trust in reviews online.
I bought three different suction cup organizers and they ALL slid down my shower wall at some point. This one from OXO doesn’t.) When I organise my closet, I think horizontally. But when I’m maximising space vertically, I think in tiers.
Low shelf, high shelf, super high shelf.
Tip #2: Measure your shit twice, drill once. Also, measure your products.
I fell victim to pretty baskets early on and bought this adorable skinny shelf that looked amazing in my bathroom but didn’t actually fit any of my bottles. Now it houses travel-sized toiletries and looks super intentional. Except it’s not.
I just pretended I bought it that way on purpose so you should too. PRO TIP #3: Not all walls are created equal. Some of my walls are plasterboard (your basic drywall) and others are actual solid wall.
There’s a reason your floating shelves always come with wall anchors: not all walls can support the same kind of storage. If you plan on hanging anything heavy (and by heavy, I mean HEAVIER than your average wall shelf) you’ll need to find the studs in your wall or buy heavy-duty wall anchors. Trust me, I learned this the hard way.
There I was, crushing glass shampoo jars under my feet because I didn’t secure my “stud found” shelf into an actual stud.
