Let's talk mirrored bathroom cabinets

I'm a fan of having a mirrored cabinet in a bathroom, and today I thought I'd share my reasons why:

1. To hide clutter

I love the minimalist look, but while I think it looks great, I like to have my things and stuff around me too. Where I'm most successful at achieving the minimalist nirvana is in our bathrooms. There is admittedly less opportunity for stuff in these rooms, but even so I have very little on show here. 

In our main bathroom there's some display shelves in a shallow alcove with a couple of candles and a vase with some beaded twigs, a box of tissues and a couple of bottles of shampoo and conditioner. Alongside the sink there's a liquid soap dispenser on a small tray, with a nail brush and a flannel. 

Storage is a small cupboard, under the alcove shelves which contains the cleaning materials. We also have three stacking wicker baskets for loo rolls and to store toiletries and towels under the sink. But the saviour for our clutter is the bathroom cabinet which stores the things we need everyday, but it's all kept out of sight - and that's just how I like it.

I know I'm never going to reach minimalist status in any other room in the house, but in the bathroom with clever storage it's much easier.

2. To add a stylish feature

The decor in our bathrooms is purposefully plain, with both tiled throughout. For me it has to be a white bathroom suite, I've taken out too many avocado suites in my time (three, if you're wondering!) and so to avoid being boring, bathrooms need a statement feature. An illuminated mirrored bathroom cabinet would provide a great feature.

I've been looking at the Pebble Grey cabinets and the Sorrel cabinet (pictured on the right below) is the one that's most like my mirrored bathroom cabinet. I wanted the softer corners to mirror, sorry no pun intended, the curve of the shower and sink.

SAVANNAH LED ILLUMINATED BATHROOM CABINET

SANDY LED ILLUMINATED BATHROOM CABINET

SORREL ILLUMINATED BATHROOM CABINET

Photo credit, all images Pebble Grey

3. To give the illusion of space

Our bathrooms aren't called our smallest room for nothing are they? And in my house, that's true - they're economical with the space and it's planned to make the best of the space we have available. Adding a mirror helps give the illusion of space as it reflects light around the room. 

So, what tips do you have for keeping your bathroom clutter free?

This is a collaborative post but all views and opinions are my own.

Post Comment Love 14-16 October 2016

Hello there and welcome to another week of Post Comment Love. And really our first week of autumnal weather, I think. It's been great to see lots of you continue to link up and both Morgan and I are pleased to see you each week. We really are a friendly bunch so if you're new to #PoCoLo then welcome, we hope you enjoy being part of our community.

This week I've dug out my scarf for the autumnal mornings, and I've been grateful for that. I'm resisting a proper coat for the moment and am relying on a chunky cardy. I'm not a fan of coats, but sometimes I know needs must, but I think the gloves will make an appearance first. But who knows. 

It's been a busy week work-wise, not a bad one, just busy. Lunches have been short and days have been long. I had a shock during the week too as I thought I'd treat us to a bottle of wine, but MOH though I was having him on as somehow I'd bought low alcohol wine. I know, not what I needed, and my first thought was why does this even exist.

Yesterday though I did get out for a wander at lunchtime and I stopped to snap the exterior of the Painted Hall. And I noticed something I hadn't before, can you see what's unusual in this picture?

HINT: LOOK AT THE CLOCK FACE

Yes, instead of a clock, it has compass points. I assume this is a naval link as it's right on the Thames, but so far I've not found out for sure. But I did wonder why I'd not noticed it before.

#BloggerShowcase - could it be you?

We've plenty of free slots for our Blogger Showcase spot, so if you're working on some content to send to us there's no time like the present. It could be you next week. If you're wondering what the Blogger Showcase is, then it's an opportunity for you to share the best bits of your blog, your social media channels and some of your favourite posts. So if it could be you, please get in touch.

An InLinkz Link-up

2016 in 2016: An October update

It's been a while since I last did an update on how my year long clear out is going, June in fact. Back then I was relatively pleased with myself for getting rid of 238 items in the three months from March. But I knew there was still a long way to go.

When I looked at my spreadsheet to write this post - and yes, you knew there'd be a spreadsheet didn't you? - well I was almost disappointed, even though the number of things we've got rid of is just about larger than those left to go. It still feels like there's a long way to go, and not much year left.

So the running total for the items I've got rid of is now 1024, which means there's just 992 things to go...  

Yes quite a lot isn't it. I've consoled myself by looking at this pretty pile of junk which was in the "junk" search results over on Unsplash. 

NOT ALL JUNK IS THIS PRETTY, SADLY

In reality, our junk has been a lot less pretty.

So what's gone?

Since my last update in June, we've got rid of:

• Food languishing at the back of the freezer.  Yes, we weren't going to eat it and some of it had been in there for a good while, so there was little point keeping it was there? And now that it's all gone, the plan is to not leave things in there for so long.
• Tea. Yes tea, over the years we've amassed quite a selection of herbal teas. Some from trips away and some we've bought and taken out of the packet to take on holiday. Yes, I am that kind of person that *might* take tea abroad with me, just in case. Of course we don't drink as much as we take and then it never goes back in the box, because we can't remember which is which. And tea bags stored in a plastic bag, doesn't sound the best storage much later on, does it. So that went too.
• Jam Jars. I have a cupboard above the fridge freezer where I hoard jam jars. And all sorts of jars really. I do make chutney and they do come in useful. But even if I made chutney every month I don't think I'd use all the jars I had. So I had a sort through and was more selective about the ones I kept. I've still to make chutney this year too. But that's another story.
• Papers, brochures and magazines. I think these have been breeding. There were loads of them and I'm sure there's still more papers to sort out (and I don't mean newspapers) but just the papers that somehow you amass. And then they breed. Those sorts. There's less now though.
• Clothes. I've had another wardrobe clear out. And the summer clothes I got out and didn't wear, well those have gone to the charity shop. It saved me putting them back into the top of the wardrobe. I'm feeling virtuous here too as all my summer clothes that I did wear, are all washed and back in their storage boxes. And even some of the winter clothes that I got out went straight to the charity bag.
• Earth. Yes earth. Over the summer we got rid of over 75 trugs of earth, and while unusual to include I'm counting them as it was something we no longer needed and makes me feel better about having an eight yard skip delivered. The skip was over half full of earth, and the other reason I'm including it here as it was all hand-lovingly carried through the house trug by trug. And was hard work!
• A shed and greenhouse clearout. Underneath all the soil in the skip, was the junk from the shed and the greenhouse that we had either forgotten we had, didn't know what it was for and even why we'd kept it in the first place. I'm sure we'll be doing that again because these types of places thrive on things like that, don't they?

992 items to go

Yes that's still quite a big number, and I'm not sure where that's going to come from.  We've still some clearing out to do in the study, so that could be a big contributor and I probably *should* go through my craft supplies to see what I've deemed potentially useful in the past.

We've still got a lot of old paint cans, some with paint in, some less so, that we want to get rid of. The trouble is how. I know it'll mean a trip to the tip at some point but I'm dreading that. I've read of a old paint collection service and I need to check to see if that operates in our area. We have pots of paint - though not sure how paint-like they'll be - from when we moved in back in 2002. And it makes sense to get rid of them rather than them taking up room in our shed.

And ironically some of the things I'd targeted early on, we still have. We still have the old yellow Dyson that I'm trying desperately to get rid of, but MOH wants to keep to clear up DIY-mess. He promises it'll go at some point, but I'm not sure when that is and I'm fed up of moving it around. 

Will we make it?

In reality I'm not sure. It's still a big number, and I'm not sure where it'll come from. But I'm not ready to give up yet. There's still two and a half months to go. Eek!  

I'll let you know how I get on.  In the meantime if you know how to safely dispose of old paint tins, which doesn't involve going to the tip, please let me know!