Living in a small space: organizing the “head” (aka the bathroom)

Living in a small space necessitates strategic optimization of every available horizontal and vertical surface. On a boat you must also take into account that your home moves and anything not properly secured will become animated. What was a great idea at anchor may prove to be a disastrous idea at sea. Even if your boat is blessed with ample storage, there is always a need for creative solutions to maintain comfort and livability. Since sailboats aren’t square, you must literally think outside the box and design systems that fit the (more likely than not) awkwardly shaped spaces. Every time we visit other boats we catalogue ideas that we can export and adapt to our boat.

If you live in a small space you’ll know that organization is a continual process, requiring many incremental adjustments. As our environment changes, so too does our use of the different living spaces. We’re continually thinking up ways to more effectively organize our belongings and occasionally some of these schemes turn into moderately successful projects. Welcome aboard! Check out our moderately successful projects!

Our “head” (aka the bathroom…don’t ask, boat vocabulary is ridiculous) measures about 3 ft x 3 ft. It’s roughly the size of a small public bathroom stall, complete with a toilet, a sink, a counter, a mirror, a hatch that opens (thank goodness) and all the requisite plumbing.

Aside from a very shallow (can barely hold a travel sized bottle of Aleve) medicine cabinet we don’t have much storage space in our bathroom. Before we left the United States Jeff purchased two little toothbrush holders. We stained and sealed them so that they would match the teak interior but they were much much cheaper than any teak anything we could find. They are perfect “his” and “hers” toothbrush and toothpaste holders.

We also purchased a fabric shoe hanger from Amazon (see link below) to organize our various toiletries and linens. To reduce the strain that it put on the back of the bathroom door (where it was originally hung), we cut it up into pieces and attached it to the available wall space. Linens are still stored on the back of the door. It’s not super high quality, but it’s already lasted us two years and still going strong. These will serve as a prototype for pockets I intend to make out of sail material and affix snap screws (a project for the distant future). For now we used the materials at hand and we’re both pleased with the outcome.

We inherited a similar fabric organizer from the previous owner that fits nicely behind the wall where we have most of our plumbing. Not sure where it was originally purchased, but it’s a really wonderful organizer. Plus it’s hidden from view which means it doesn’t have to look pretty all the time.

At Puerto Mutis I was overjoyed to find pieces of scrap wood in the dumpster (I had been on the hunt since El Salveaor). I cut down the wood so that it would fit the awkward spaces underneath our bathroom sink and used L brackets (two on the bottom, one on top) to affix the shelves to the wall. Rather than it being a jumbled mess of cleaning products, oil and degreasers, it’s now much easier to find exactly what we want. The bottles are held in place using a piece of string held taught between (in keeping with the boat theme) mini cleats on either side of the shelf.

We were pretty strategic about what linens we brought on the boat. Regular towels occupy a lot of space and also take a long time to fully dry. I did an embarrassing amount of research and found some microfiber towels (YogaRat Towels) of various sizes (hand towel size, regular towel size and massive beach towel size). They’re colorful, they’re lightweight, they’re compact, and when hung outside they’re dry in about 15 minutes.

For our soap and incense holder we found some cool shells along the way. They do a nice job of adding some character to our bathroom. A bucket serves as our trashcan (we don’t flush our paper) and double functions as our “gross job” bucket (every boat needs one). Jeff recently invented the FAFAH (pronounced fa-fah), which stands for Further Away From Abject Horror. This is what we use to lift the lid of the trashcan so our hands our spared.

So, yeah. That’s our bathroom. Pretty special, eh? We’ll be sharing some of our other organizational solutions as we get inspired. In the meantime, if you buy anything on Amazon through our site, including the products in this post, we will get a little kick back!

This is the shoe hanger we cut up……………………and these are the awesome microfiber towels.