Solving the Bathroom Problem

How to make these necessary spaces beautiful, especially with a large family

Our current main bathroom, missing its floor—for the second time.

The bathroom is a most necessary room—I believe I once read they were once referred to by that name at the advent of indoor plumbing. Don Aslett, one of my housekeeping lodestars, notes that the most important thing about a bathroom is keeping it clean. But the woman in me wants it to be beautiful as well. So I’ve always been interested in seeing how other homemakers achieve this, especially those with large rambunctious households.

When I was visiting family this summer, I was delighted to see how some of my sisters-in-law have cinched this difficulty, and asked if I could share some of their clever solutions. Neither of them have fancy homes or large amounts of disposable income (I did mention that both of them have lots of children, right? One has majority boys too) and their homes were not particularly spruced up for company, which makes this achievement even more praiseworthy.

I’m also posting pictures of one of my own bathrooms, since we finally figured out how to make it work. I designed this one myself (ahem) as an upstairs bathroom for older children, and it’s currently in use by all of us, since the floor of our main bathroom imploded this past year when its ancient cast-iron plumbing gave out. Photos of that renovation will have to await another day.

Three different bathrooms in three different homes. Yet each is cheerful and uplifting in its own way.

Cute Shelving

Even in an age of cabinets and counters, cute open shelving is an easy practical way to beautify a bathroom. Each housekeeper came up with a different way to house the necessaries. The first is a couple’s bathroom shared with a teenage boy. The second bathroom equips a mom of young girls. The last shelving unit is so clever I’m still geeking out over it, particularly the miniature clothesline to hang the crocheted washloths. Each homemaker added color: one mom repainted a plain wood shelf to make it match the rest of the bathroom. Another upholstered her wire shelf with a scrap of colorful fabric. Another relied on the colors of washcloths and used beach towels for bath towels.

Storage Solutions

Figuring out how to store the often visually displeasing components of a bathroom is another challenge. My rule is to display the bottles, tubes, and components that look nice, and hide the rest as best as I can, while keeping every tool close to where it’s going to be used. This is not an easy trick to pull off, and I enjoy seeing how others accomplish it.

One mom relied on a plank beneath the open sink to store baskets of unattractive necessities. Another had her husband build her a drop-down shelving unit in their tiny bathroom just for the baby. Another personalized a plain room by using antiques such as this old medicine cabinet to hide necessaries. And I love how she stores the toilet paper in the drawers of this antique cabinet, and lets just a few sheets hang out to serve as the toilet-roll holder.

Ornamentation

Again, everyone has their own style and each homemaker used hers. I admire the very feminine cotton curtains framing the very masculine tiled shower stall. Another hung an original painting on a log slice as a good daily reminder to herself and her daughters.

I feel like I need to explain our own bathroom a bit. Years ago I started painting the ceilings of our home, and when my daughter and I were renovating this one, she requested I paint a ceiling mural for it. I agreed but I asked if I could paint the entire bathroom as well.

The entire bathroom used to be the rather technicolor bright blue, and we muted down the walls with a golden beige, but I kept the bright blue on the ceiling, which now pops quite nicely. My daughter had the idea to put a hallway carpet down to cushion the super-narrow strip of floor in this horizontally-challenged space, and it works!

What tied it all together was this original piece of artwork bought from a neighbor’s yard sale. I picked it because I was pretty sure the roof and flowers were the same blue as the ceiling (which I had been staring at for a long period of time). Once we hung it, the entire bathroom décor instantly cohered. My daughter replaced the towels with blue ones, painted the shelving unit the same green of the flowers, and miraculously, a pretty polyester floral curtain I had bought on impulse last year turned out to share the same palette as the painting. It’s like we planned the entire thing, when actually it was pieced together over the course of months, as most of us homemakers roll.

Years ago, I started a blog that asked the question: How can you be an artist when you're a busy mom or dad who doesn't have much time to write novels or paint pictures or compose sonatas? This is the dilemma for the beauty-lover who wants to help build a culture of life but just doesn't have time.

What can be done is to try to make our homes our art, for our families.

That’s what each of these women have been trying to do in their own small ways, and I’m happy to share the inspiration, in hope that it inspires you.