Assignment #13: Cross Off the Cabinet Clearout

The vanity cabinet is my nemesis.

Okay, nemesis might be a little strong. It’s not as though it’s the most packed piece of storage in our apartment; that dubious honor remains with the office closet (whose days are numbered). But it does feel like it’s actively waging war on my attempts at organization. Every time I clean the bathroom, I dutifully straighten everything on the counter and put things like hairbrushes and nail clippers back under the sink out of sight. The minute I turn my back, though, things start creeping out again, and three days later you’d never know that I’d tidied at all. The way that some people feel about dishes or laundry, those chores that are never really done because as fast as you wash things they’re dirty again? That’s how I feel about keeping my vanity neat.

I think the reason I find it so annoying is that I don’t even feel like I have that much stuff. I don’t wear makeup every day but do like to wear it on weekends and for special occasions, so while I do own a little bit of everything, it’s just that: a little bit. I have a few bottles of hair product, but you’d definitely never mistake our bathroom for a salon. I don’t collect hotel toiletries; I never have. I keep the first aid kit and general necessities like cotton balls and swabs under the sink, but we’re pretty good about not buying more until we’re nearly out. It’s not like we’re hoarding enough toilet paper to last through the apocalypse or anything.

Here, let me show you. Before I pulled everything out, the cabinet looked like this:

1_Vanity_Before

Not too bad, right? Could be worse, right?

Once I got everything out, I grouped things into categories:

2_Vanity_Items_CollageClockwise from the top left, you’ll see my cosmetics (nail polishes are in the pink train case, makeup is in the green Orla Kiely tote), hair tools and products, first aid and personal care items, and miscellaneous stuff. In case you’re curious, the thing in the box is a massager for the tension knots I get in my back and neck, and the charger is for Justin’s electric razor. No, I have no idea where the razor is. If I wanted to find it, the bathroom is the last place I’d look, because for some reason it always ends up in some strange place, like the office.

These are all items that I use regularly and intend to keep. There would have been more fluff and clutter here, except that I purged a bunch of unwanted items a couple of months ago, including cologne samples that Justin never worse and a few travel products that I didn’t actually like all that much. Despite that clean-out, I still found things to get rid of:

3_Rejects

You’ll notice that the train case and its contents went from being a keeper to a reject. As I was sitting on the floor preparing to tuck it all back into the cabinet, I realized that I couldn’t remember the last time I wore nail polish, let alone which color I used. All of my polishes are more than a year old, and all of them had separated. I realized that if I suddenly got the craving to paint my nails, I’d want something fun and fresh to match my mood, not some goopy old color that I’d bought to match an outfit I probably don’t even own anymore.

So, I’m bagging up all of those bottles for disposal. Apparently nail polish is considered household hazardous waste, so it’s not fit for the garbage or recycling, and definitely not the drain. I’ve been to the disposal facility in my county before, but if you’re not sure of where yours is or if they’ll take your particular kind of waste, check out the search feature at Earth911.

Other items getting the boot are old eye shadows and a lip gloss sampler freebie from I’d-prefer-not-to-talk-about-how-long-ago, some nail care paraphernalia, the two cosmetic bags, and two bamboo containers that used to hold a ceramic toothbrush holder and a soap dispenser that were dumped when I realized they were impossible to clean. Also, that retainer case? How is that even still here? I got my braces off in 9th grade. I’m now 27 and have moved 5 times since then. Time to say goodbye.

While the transformation isn’t dramatic, it’s nice to know that I’ve further streamlined my bathroom kit:

4_Vanity_After

The next step in the process will be to get better organization solutions because, let’s face it, that BB&B gift box has seen better days, and I need more clearly defined areas for things, otherwise they end up dumped all over each other. Then they multiply. And hatch plots to take over the bathroom. My bathroom doesn’t need to be a “spa-like sanctuary,” but I’d definitely appreciate it if it didn’t feel like an enemy camp.

 

 

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