Challenge #13: The Bathroom

Let's peg away a bit more at the spring cleaning with this week's challenge.  If you have one bathroom, this should be pretty quick and easy.  If you have more than one, well, then it will be more challenging!  (It's okay to groan, it was a bad pun.)

For now, ignore the sink, shower and toilet.  Start with the cabinet, or if you have a linen closet in your bathroom, start with that.  Now empty it out.  Totally.

How many things are in there that you forgot you owned?  How many of them are past the point of being useful?  Get rid of those.  If it's some form of medication, you might want to Google the best way of disposing of it.  For non-chemical/non-medicine items, decide if it is recyclable or just plan garbage.

Now look at what remains.  Are there any items you forgot about or haven't used in eons, and otherwise feel safe in getting rid of?  Decide where to pass them on to.  Maybe you have ten million towels and only use six of them.  And maybe you also know of a young person about to leave for college or their own apartment this summer/fall.  Perfect person to ask if they would like some nice usable towels.  Or, if the towels aren't so humanly desirable (a bit worn, perhaps), maybe the local animal shelter would like to have them.

Once you have sorted the trash from the donations, and put the donations into a box or bag to give to their intended recipient, take what you have left--which should be the stuff you actually use or can foresee a need for in the near future--and put those things back into the cabinet or closet AFTER you wipe the cabinet/closet out to get rid of any dust or cobwebs that might be accumulated there.

That should be the biggest task of our bathroom cleaning challenge.  Now all you need to do is the usual cleaning of the bathroom:

• tub/shower, toilet, and sink  
• wipe down the counter, 
• clean the mirror real quick (and the window too if your bathroom has one), 
• take to the laundry any towels that might be hanging over the shower curtain rod or doors and on the towel bars, 
• if you have a window with curtains, take those down and put them in the laundry too
• hang fresh hand towels
• remove any trash and the bag or box of items for donation,
• sweep and quickly mop the floor.  

Once the floor is clean, you can look with a sense of accomplishment at your completed challenge.  Doesn't that sparkly clean, uncluttered bathroom look wonderful?