The Resolution: Month 7 - Master Bathroom

Month 7 is in the books!  And although I despise cleaning bathrooms, I do love me some sparkly clean ones!

We included our closet with the master bath since it is connected and we didn't have a ton to do in the bathroom itself besides extensive scrubbing.  Matt and I are both pretty good at maintaining a "Goodwill pile" - a pile of stuff we no longer need or use that is still in good enough condition to donate.  Any time the pile (hamper) gets full, I just make a stop at the Goodwill on my way to work and we are free of the clutter that could easily overrun our house.  But for some reason, we both have a hard time getting rid of clothes.  Maybe because it is so darn expensive to buy in the first place.  Or maybe because certain outfits remind me of life events and I enjoy the nostalgia.  Or maybe because the inner hoarder in all of us whispers, "Maaaaaybe you'll wear that top someday.  If you get invited to an 80's-themed Hawaiian luau..."  So our mission for the closet was to purge anything we didn't need, hadn't worn in recent history, or didn't have a good line of sight to wearing soon.  Between the two of us, we were able to weed out more than 3 boxes worth of clothing, accessories and shoes!  A little cleaning and organizing, and voila:

Before

After

Before

After

A minor upgrade, but a necessary one, was switching out the stool that we use outside of the shower for our towels.  The old one was an IKEA as-is find that we got for $10 years ago and used to sit on while we played the drums in Rock Band.  Not the classiest piece of furniture we own.  Lucky for us, the Fry's Marketplace right by our house was having a closeout clearance sale on their home goods, and we were able to find the wooden beauty below at a steal.

Next came the bathtub - which has been overrun by Ryan's numerous bath toys over the last few months.  He's got boats, dogs, ducks, frogs, books, animal clings and more - and they were all lined up along the side of the tub each night to dry out.  So Matt went onto Amazon.com and ordered a nice little Oxo bath toy storage bin that has holes on all sides to drain the toys (and prevent mildew from building up.)  Then a little scrub-a-dub-dub and we called that piece done.

So many toys...

Much better

The only remaining big piece was the vanity.  Drawers needed to be cleaned out and organized, and counters/sinks/mirrors needed some TLC.  It took a while to get through all of it, but it makes such a difference in how nice the bathroom looks when everything is clean and put away!  

The rest of the bathroom was just a ton of cleaning, cleaning and more cleaning, which is boring so I didn't take any pictures.  The only major cleaning tip that I learned was in regards to the toilet, but I decided to spare the pictures on that one :)  AZ is notorious for their hard water, which leaves nasty calcified rings around the toilet bowl (and anywhere else water sits.)  I had read that a baking soda/peroxide mix was key in removing the ring, but after about 3 rounds of that, I was getting frustrated.  Matt suggested I use a pumice stone that he had originally purchased to use for the calcium lines in the pool.  Sure enough, 10 seconds of light scrubbing and the toilet looked brand new!