Hang on, let me set the scene for you. Picture the scene: it’s last month, I’m stood in the shower in my bathroom when I open (what used to be) our towel cupboard. Cue about six towels falling out onto the floor, in a soggy heap.
Again. Cue me saying “oh for crying out loud” out loud. Family joke there; I’m turning into my mother.
This wasn’t the first time the bathroom towel situation has resembled a Slip ‘N Slide. Oh no.
When me and Danny first moved into our wee terrace, our bathroom had one towel rail.
ONE. When there are two of us showering every day + guests sometimes! DO THE MATHS.
Dry towels started piling on top of wet towels; wet towels never dried. There always smelt like a weird damp towel smell. I tried hooks that clipped onto the bathroom door.
Yeah, nah. Our bathroom door is one of those hollow cheap-looking ones, so every time you shut it it vibrates in sympathy. Anything heavier than a microfibre cloth and the door poked out like it was pregnant. #hotdoorproblems So where did the lightbulb moment come from, you ask?
Stalking other peoples’ Instagram stories, obvs. One of my colleagues from work, Jess, lives in a house that makes me hate myself / love interior design. Anyway she’d posted some pictures of her bathroom and I legitimately paused scrolling.
She had open shelves above her toilet with towels rolled neatly on them; not shoved on the rail in weird wonky piles like mine. But they weren’t ANY towels. They were hotel-quality towels neatly folded AND colour coordinated.
We mounted two floating shelves from the local builders’ merchants (about £30 each, plus about an hour of Danny holding the shelf while I unsuccessfully dulled my hysterical woman hormones with a spirit level) and presto: storage! If I’ve learnt anything from my excursions into DIY land, it’s that shelf height is everything. Your bottom shelf should hit eye-level – these are your “everyday” towels.
The ones you need to grab in a hurry post-shower without having to crane your neck or think about where you’re putting them down. Top shelf is for guest towels and backups. Did I get this right straight away?
Heck no. It took me THREE tries! ! Pinterest doesn’t tell you about dust.
Okay, so you’ve got your shiny new open shelving, your colour coordinated towels folded just-so. Whoops. Someone’s got to dust up there every week if you want it to stay that way.
Compromise: keep your everyday towels on the bottom shelf and swap / wash everything on a regular basis to prevent mildewness. My sister was round last week and before she’d even sat down she said “Hang on, these shelves are never going to survive five minutes with MY kids.” Fair point. Her youngest child treats towels like rock-climbing frames.
She got one of these long skinny cabinets and fitted it into the alcove between the sink units and the wall. Looks like actual furniture, holds more stuff than my shelves do and has doors. Slightly more pricey than my shelves (£120-ish according to her, from IKEA), but if it lives there’ll be no demolishing schoolboy showers in sight.
Have you seen THESE wire things that claim to let you hang stuff on tiles WITHOUT drills? Me three. Especially the 3M ones that claim to “bond FOREVER” to your tiles.
Sureee. If ANYTHING could stick to my bathroom tiles and survive, it’d be me. WRONG.
They’ve had our good thick bath towels hanging off them for over a year now though, so long MAYBE they’re onto something. Handy tip I learned by FAILING at these in my first attempt though: you need to clean the tile with alcohol first. Magic!
Speaking of hangers that don’t require drills. BEST accidental buy EVER. I was mooching around one of those old vintage shops in town (mine’s Fullers – highly recommend, opposite the Ironing Shed).
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Ones that do lamp bases but also stuff you definitely weren’t looking for when you wandered in. And lo and behold, actual COAT hooks. Heavy duty ones.
Proper brass ones with actual mounting screws sticking out of the back. Supposedly reclaimed from a school playground? Looks completely out of place in a bathroom until you see my friend’s loo below.
Industrial-edgy enough to work with her white metro tiles I guess? Cost me about £8 each but will definitely outlive the tininess of those 3M miracles. Old ladder = towel storage.
Neighbours_down_the_street Sarah’s the one with the jungle-for-a-front-garden. She up-cycled an old wooden ladder into towel storage. Sounds so Pinterest-country living but actually WORKS in her wee skinny bathroom.
Stands up against the wall so doesn’t take up any floor space, and because the towels aren’t bunched up together they actually dry. She sanded it down and used some boat-proof varnish stuff so it could handle the steam I guess. Right, cabinets.
DON’T buy the cheapest cabinet you can find. Go around the tilting shelfays of particleboard with the paper thin veneer that start drooping after about 2 seconds in your bathroom. Trust.
Learn from my mistakes. I bought the cheapest cabinet out there and within SIX MONTHS it was bowing in the middle and smelt of mould. Invest in decent hinges, moisture barrier and wood.
Now I look for solid wood OR decent engineered wood, decent moisture barrier and shelves I can actually adjust! Did you know you can fit little rails inside cabinet doors? Insaloan hinges, if you will.
I’ve got THESE skinny rails screwed into the inside of our sink cabinet doors. AMAZING for extra hand towel storage. Takes 5 minutes to do, costs next to nothing and voila: extra storage you didn’t know you had.
HOW you store matters almost as much as WHERE you store. Against all advice I decided to fold our towels like they’re meant to be folded in hotels, so they sit upright like bottles in a fridge. Did the laughable Maddie washing load on Sunday in that system and Sunday evening they looked like a tornado’d just been.
Rolling is better. Takes up about the same amount of space, stays neatter for longer and you can grab what you need without every towel coming tumbling out like before. Same as with your clothes closet: white towels together, coloured towels together.
Bath towels separate from hand towels. I know. SPELLS.
DOCT. But it seriously made life easier when I started splitting our towels into categories like that. Load up your towel storage too much and they won’t dry.
Seriously.
Towels need space to breath, even when they’re stacked neatly on a shelf. Pack them in too tight and they’ll never dry properly between washes, start to smell funny and never feel 100% dry even when they’reclean.
Be ruthless: half the towels and DOUBLE the space. Placement is key. Stashing your towel storage next to the shower rail might seem like a DUMBUMENTICIOUS place to stash your towels but hear me out.
If it’s RIGHT next to where you shower AND the radiator, it’s basically rolling out the welcome-mould mat. We hung our shelves across from where the shower is (and away from the radiator as well) and it made SUCH a difference to how towel-smelling they stayed. Right now I use a mix of all the above.
Open shelves for everyday towels (top + bottom shelf for different towels like I mentioned above), cabinetry for overflow / guest towels, hooks for hanging wet towels to dry THEN putting away. It took me TINKERS and a lot of failing (literally had to rebuild one of my shelves THREE times r u_serious) and oodles of measuring / standing on chairs, but now I can open ANY cupboard or shelf in our bathroom without fear of avalanche. Everything’s actually dry when I need it AND I can FIND the towel I need without having to dig through piles of damp towels.
WIN.
