My inaugural room: The Bathroom!

The Bathroom Part I:
The bathroom I have decided to clean as the first room on my project is the bathroom that my sister and I share. She is now at college so really it is all mine. Bathrooms have a nasty ora around them when it comes to cleaning, but honestly they are one of the easiest rooms to clean and sort through, because the belongings inside usually are not of high emotional importance. You don't have to fight sentiment when getting rid of things.

everything out of the cabinets and on the floor and counter,
what a mess!

Cleaning the bathroom:
Step 1:
The first thing I did when starting to clean out my bathroom was empty all of the cabinets onto the floor. Don't be shy here you need to get everything out of the place where it hides. Be sure to get anything out of your shower as well. Then put everything in a massive heap in the middle of the floor. I was completely amazed by the sheer volume of stuff that was in the cabinets when I could see it all on the floor.
Step 2:

on the left is the"get rid of" basket, center is"keep" basket
and on the right is the trash can.

The second step I took was prety darn simple. I took two laundry baskets and a trashcan and laied them out in the hallway outside the bathroom. One of the laundry baskets I designated as "keep" the other was for things to get rid of and the trashcan is self explanatory.
Step 3:
Start sorting. Keep this as mindless as possible and quickly sort through item by item. If you get held up on an item just keep it, it is your house, but if you later run out of space you might have to make the hard decision to get rid of it.
Tips:
Consolidate:

My sister's various bottles of the same products. left two
are shampoo right two are conditioner.

It is always a good idea to consolidate two bottles of the same product. An example of this : my sister has two bottles of each her shampoo and conditoiner both are fairly empty. This is a great time to pour the contents of one bottle into the other (use your judgement so you don't overflow the bottle). Sometimes you can run into the issue of having too many variations of one type of product (seven different kinds of toothpaste) in this situation I would get rid of some and limit yourself to a reasonable amount of variety. Another alternative if you want to avoid wasting the product is methodically use up each partial container. Stay disciplined with this it is easy to think you have run out of the product and you them add a whole other variety from the store.

In part II I will cover the actual cleaning of the bathroom surfaces and in part III I will cover organization and replacing the items.

Until next time, happy cleaning!