Filed under: Your Home, Bathroom, Storage & Cleaning, Storage & Organization, Cleaning
The secret to keeping a kids bathroom clean starts with the kids. Photo: Getty Images
Is it possible to keep a tidy toilet with kids in the house? You betcha.
My husband and I were forced to use our kids' bathroom recently; it's typically a place I avoid unless I'm cleaning it. But since ours was being renovated, I found myself brushing and flossing next to my two young children -- and noticing exactly how much the bathroom didn't function for them. There was little storage, a perpetually wet floor and toothpaste gunk everywhere -- and most of it could be prevented (or at very least minimized) with a few changes. (Suddenly, I was reorganizing two bathrooms in the house!)
In rethinking their bathroom, I found that it's the little things that truly make a difference when it comes to keeping a kids bathroom clean. The kids try their best to clean, but it's not always so easy. Here's my advice:
1. Add storage in the shower.
It's quite simple: No storage in the shower means a disaster in the tub. We wondered why there were always bottles of shampoo and conditioner, not to mention bars of soap, strewn all over the tub. After years of cajoling my kids to keep the tub neat, it was our turn to see just how impossible it was to place shampoo and conditioner bottles on the shallow tub surround. So off to Bed Bath & Beyond to buy a three-tier pole caddy -- big enough so they couldn't miss it and spacious enough so things wouldn't fall out of it. Problem solved -- and the kids actually thanked us!
But there's another solution: a wall mounted soap-and-shampoo dispenser that keeps liquids in check. We like Simple Human's triple dispenser because it's durable and easy to use.
2. Give the kids a place to hang (and put) stuff.
Don't want discarded towels and the day's clothes to end up on the floor -- install lots of hooks and consider placing a hamper in the bathroom. And be sure to hang the hooks at a height that your children can reach -- otherwise, they won't use them. Make a game out of getting them to hang up their towels to dry or putting their bath toys back into a fun froggy caddy by Boon, or baskets.
3. Move the toilet paper roll.
If your toilet paper holder is located near the shower, it probably gets drizzled with water whenever someone takes a shower. If you can move it, do so. If you can't, here's an idea: To combat mushy toilet paper, we place a washcloth or small towel over the roll until they are finished showering. Problem solved. Another idea: Place a shower cap over the roll.
4. Buy soap they won't want to squeeze.
The feeling of a soft bar of soap in the hands of a youngster is a tactile treat. So what do they do? They squeeze it until it squishes into an unrecognizable shape...then it falls apart. One solution: Buy fun soaps, like Uncommon Goods' whistle-shaped soap-on-a-rope or specialty Breakfast soaps, that no kid wants to disfigure because they are too fun to look at. Their hands will be clean, the soap won't be dismantled into shards, and everyone wins.
5. Put a cap on toothpaste goo.
If you have a child who graciously puts the cap on the toothpaste, lucky you. Most kids, including ours, let it dribble and ooze all over the sink and vanity. Lovely to clean up. But there's a solution: a wall-mounted toothpaste dispenser. I have my eye on the Touch N' Brush, a hands-free dispenser that can be found in any drugstore for less than $20.
6. Don't skip the daily wipe-down.
If you have a boy, you know that there is a direct correlation to how many times you clean the bathroom and how well he aims -- enough said on that. But the one secret to a clean kids' bathroom is the once-a-day (sometimes twice-a-day) clean up of sink and tub debris (ie: hair, bits of soap and other bits of unidentified objects). I tend to simply wet a washcloth with warm water and wipe any surface I can reach. Another idea: Try buying Clorox wipes and ask your little one to wipe out the sink after every brush -- I've read that some parents offer this option: The cleaner the sink, the larger their allowance. (Just hope the wipe makes it into the trash can.)
7. Check all angles.
Just after cleaning the vanity mirror, I noticed that it would immediately be covered with toothpaste splatters. So I observed my little ones as they brushed their teeth. It turns out that they were brushing with their face up too close to the mirror and at a strange angle -- so I taught them the habit of looking into the sink when brushing and it seems to work. For much younger children, mirror splatters happen perhaps because the sink is too high. You may want to watch your kids too. Maybe a higher step stool will help them aim better, which will limit toothpaste splatters. If you're redoing the bathroom, consider a sink with a wide mouth (like a large pedestal version) rather than a taller vessel sink, which is harder to reach over.
8. Combat tub muck.
If you have a daughter with long hair, you'll want to clean up her hair each time she bathes. I learned a trick for this awhile back and I swear by it: Wipe up hair tangled in the bathtub drain with a used dryer sheet. Somehow the friction of a used dryer sheet (new ones are too slick) tangles with the hair and pulls it out of the drain. It works better than paper towels and tissue paper, and it will keep the drain from clogging, which causes water to back up. (This is what causes that slimy film to appear on the tub.) Ick!
9. Eliminate white.
Okay, that's obvious. But what I see a lot of people doing (us included) is putting cheerful, light-colored towels and bath rugs in the kids' bathroom. Yes, I love creamy white towels and bath rugs, too, but this just makes more work for me. The towels keep making their way onto the bathroom floor. Memo to myself: Start buying darker colored towels -- with stripes -- for the kids only. Stripes will hide a multitude of blood and dirt stains.
Another tip: Choose a dark colored shower curtain, even if it doesn't look as pretty. The creamy white fabric shower curtain with embroidered flowers that I installed in the kids' bathroom quickly became smudged with all kinds of fingerprints and splotches. Fabric shower curtains have no place in a child's bathroom.
I learned this after I unsuccessfully tried to bleach my lovely fabric shower curtain back to its original color. I'm now on the hunt for a PVC-free shower curtain, now widely available, according to a report in U.S. News and Health. When I find a durable non-fabric shower curtain, I will also be gratefully relieved that I no longer have to continually replace (seemingly on a weekly basis) shower curtain liners. Even the heavyweight liners rip from the hooks when tugged too hard.
10. Forget the toothbrush holder.
It wasn't logical to install a wall-mounted holder in the kids' bathroom, so I fell for the cute toothbrush holders that sit on the counter. But they have bottoms, and they collect even more goo from toothbrushes than a wall-mounted version. The yuck factor was too high for me, so I decided to have my daughter make a bottomless toothbrush holder out of her plastic Lego Clikits. The lesson? A bottomless toothbrush holder is easier to clean. The question remains: Where did all that goo go?