Hey! As we enter July, I realize we've been living in this apartment for eight months. Time to redo everything! Inspired by the desperate need to spruce up the loo, I thought I'd start in the back of the house and work our way up. So here's room one - the bathroom, fully spruced!

As a reminder, here's where we were, after I installed some shelves and a towel bar and stuffed the space with all white everything.

Bathroom storage through Ikea hanging shelves and towel bar.

It was, well, fine. As you may remember, the impetus for installing the shelving and towel bar was the fact that weren't any in the bathroom when we got here. Not so much as a hook. Oh, and I've mentioned that our medicine cabinet was so tiny as to be almost useless, but here's a quick shot in case you need to see to believe.

So, since the medicine cabinet couldn't hold anything taller than a Tums jar, I had to pull in one of those tiny bathroom standing shelves to hold necessities.

I was reluctant and I was right to be: It looked terrible. Though I would of course tidy it up often, it always degenerated quickly. It sorta made sense to store washcloths there - handy, after all - but then they would become a jumbled mess and I would go crazy. Especially since I spent a fair amount of time with a good view of this spot. (Our toilet's like 18 inches from it). Meanwhile, as I think I mentioned, our white shower curtain got trashed with hair color and toothpaste and mystery stains, so a new one was in order. I bought one, and reorganized some stuff in the storage unit and on the shelves.

Hmm. That was a pretty good start. I started with a clearance Target planter ($2.38) to wrangle the top shelf stuff (face scrub, mouthwash) and I "shopped my house" for the cookie and candy jars. But I'm just not so great at leaving things alone, so after staring at this view for a day or two, I decided some spray paint was in order. P.S. My obsession with spray paint is back. I decided the first floor roof outside our kitchen windows was designed to be my little DIY studio, so I broke out the kitchen window screen and have been climbing in and out (gracefully) ever since.

Outside our apartment. It looks...safe, doesn't it?

Anyway, I set up a little booth out there, and sprayed a few things. I started with the elephant that's holding our toothbrushes. I found him on Amazon a few months ago and was just thrilled to find something that could drain (through his adorable trunk!) while looking cute. He started off gray, as elephants do... but I decided he needed to be gold.

Then I thought that if the wee storage unit was matte black, it might look less like an extension of our bathroom fixtures, in a good way. So I sprayed it, and then I repurposed a couple of those little Anchor Hocking jars on the second shelf to hold bathroom essentials cotton swabs, cotton balls and tooth picks. I feel like it's confession time here: When I initially ordered those little jars, in a set of six last summer, I had no idea they were so tiny. I just thought I was getting a really, really good deal. So, note to self: Pay attention to dimensions. But the good news is that I have plenty of use for tiny jars, so here they live. Meanwhile, the washcloths were all relocated to the baskets on the white shelves. This prevents Louisa from choosing her favorite 17 for bath time and also allows for a little sloppiness, sight unseen.

Also up on the shelves: A prettier bowl to hold my shower sponges, a white cup to hold extra bamboo toothbrushes, and a fake plant. I normally abhor fake plants, but this room gets no light, and I loved this littel one, which I found fairly convincing.

It was also high time for a new shower mat. Our white one was a total fail, looking as dismal and dirty as our shower curtain and getting worse with dirty summer flip flop feet stomping all over it. (My attempts to hang it over the side of the tub between showers were to no avail because it takes a village to save a white bath mat). I really, really, really wanted a Turkish rug or similar - something like any one of these. But the cheapest I could find was $55 on Overstock, and too big for the space anyway. So I headed to a local carpet shop, where they sell bound samples for $3, and bought this guy. He is great. He hides dirt and looks a little like the dark bathroom tile I'm swooning over these days. And he was $3.

Finally, I figured I'd hang some art in here. (I knocked off our zombie print during a particularly zealous shower cleaning session and have needed something new). I didn't want to spend any money, but I luckily already had a bunch of stuff I was stoked about. You can see all three of the art pieces in the shot above (ignore the cord you can see in the mirror), and I'm so happy they're all here! There's something cool to look at whether you're brushing your teeth or stepping out of the shower. I'll talk more about the source of the artwork in a later post.

The terrarium is, as I spilled on Friday, fake - I just decapitated a small fake plant I had, added some moss and hung the globe from a clear Command Hook attached to the ceiling. I love it. It, combined with the fake plant on the shelves manage to add a little life to what was a sterile environment.

As I say, I tried to pull this off on a budget. Here's the breakdown:

Shower Curtain (Burlington Coat Factory) $8
Shower Liner (Burlington Coat Factory) $4
Bath Mat (Local Carpet Store) $3
Bath storage tower (Marshall's) $20
Fake plant (TJ Maxx) $13
Terrarium (TJ Maxx) $4 + $2 for Moss (had fake plant)
Elephant toothbrush holder (Amazon) $6
Remaining accessories, frames and art - had

Total: $60. I didn't count the spray paint, as I had that, but $5 each per can is standard. I also technically had the storage tower from before this little "makeover," but I figured I'd include it. And that's one room down! Stay tuned for the next room to get a little update, and I'll see you tomorrow!