Who in their right mind carpets a bathroom? Especially a full bathroom with a shower stall? When we moved into our home, the first floor bathroom had wall to wall carpet. It functions as our powder room, and we had too many other things to do in the house to worry about the bathroom floor right away.
Three years later, James was potty trained and aiming poorly as young boys do. And before you could say “urine soaked,” the carpet was replaced with tile.
The shower stall, however, became a closet from the moment we moved in. We had no need for a third full bath, but we did have a need for storage. So after we stripped the previous owners’ horrible wallpaper off the walls, we painted and hung curtains and a valance to hide the shower. Now when guests visit our powder room and sit upon the throne, they see this.
I took better shot from the mirror above the sink, which is across from the shower.
I know it’s human nature to peek behind the curtain; you’re dying to know what we have hidden there, aren’t you? It’s an ugly shower door that poorly conceals the things I don’t want people to see.
Let’s take a closer look at what guests would see if they had the gall to open the doors.
It’s really not exciting, but it is functional. I’ve heard that you can learn a lot about a person by peeking in their medicine cabinets. By peeking in our shower/closet, you would learn that:
- We have a dog.
- I’ve saved every gift bag we’ve received since my baby shower.
- We are not particular about our paper towel or toilet paper brands.
And if that tells you something deep and meaningful about my family, more power to you.
I just think it means you’re a snooper.
Haha, this made me laugh, the house i grew up in also has a carpeted bathroom and my mom hates it, every year she swears she will remove it. So far the ripping out is scheduled for 2014, let’s see if it happens 🙂
Maybe she needs a huge spill or stain to prompt its removal. The thought of toddler pee all over the carpet was enough to make us rip that baby out right away!
I admit, I would snoop! But I think this is an ingenious way to use an unused shower. I ALWAYS need more storage space, so why not, right?
And seriously, what is with the gift bags? Is it an ingrained female thing, since we’re usually the ones responsible for gift buying and wrapping for major occasions? I have a stash too, it’s just out in the garage where I don’t have to feel guilty about it. I’ve been known to pounce on the husband if he tries to through out a gift bag when he thinks I’m not looking!
I don’t know – I just feel like it’s a waste to throw them out. I’ll never use them all, but still I keep them. Along with tons of tissue paper that ends up all over the shower/closet.
I love how there’s a shower curtain AND a sliding door! You know, to *really* keep the water inside the shower stall lol. We have something similar. We have a wet bar that we totally use for storage. If only we could tear it down and turn it into, well, storage 🙂
I know! But we may need that shower one day – it’s attached to a bedroom that I use as an office. It’s a gross old shower though – if we ever used it I’d want to redo it, which I’m sure would thrill my husband.
Does EVERY woman have a gift-bag/wrapping paper stash? Where do we pick that up from? Is it our mothers? Cos mine’s almost as messy as yours is. Or maybe messier.
Thanks for the snoop 😉
You’re very welcome. I know my mom had a stash too; maybe it’s hereditary.
Dana, I totally thought I commented on this post. I blame jet lag! In my head, I thought I already wrote this: I’m just impressed that you put up a curtain to hide the secret stash. I would have totally left my skeletons for all to see!
That curtain took 5 minutes to hang on a tension rod, and so worth it! And I can relate (without being able to use jet lag as an excuse); I think lots of things in my head that never actually make it outta there!
funny timing. my hubs literally just came in and announced that he wants to convert our shower into a closet so I’d have a place to hide all my crap!!!
Really? What a coincidence. But if that’s the shower you actually use, he may want to rethink that. 🙂
I can’t tell you how much this makes me want to hug you. I love that you shared real life. I spend way too much looking at home decorating blogs. I need some real people like you.
That’s the nicest comment I’ve received in awhile, Allison -thank you! Wait until you read the DIY posts I have in the works; I’m like the anti-Martha Stewart.
You have a little bit of hoarder in you! I would have never guessed 🙂
Nah – just the gift bags. Yes, it does look a little hoarderish, but that’s just because it’s in a shower!
I’m not a snooper – it’s just bad karma if you ask me. But ominous shower curtains scare me. I’d probably have to look behind it just to make sure that there was no one standing there before I sued your facilities. But as soon as I saw that no one was there, I’d quickly close the curtain before I took a good look at what was stored in there. Swear.
I didn’t even think about the shower/Psycho connection – I wouldn’t blame you for looking!
I would probably steal a roll of toilet paper if I visited. And store some of my baseball cards. You wouldn’t notice, would you?
I doubt it – especially if you hid the cards underneath all the wrapping paper.Unless they’re worth something…
Dana- I just LOVE you!!!! This is completely awesome. Hey- you shove it somewhere whereyou can’t see it, it works! XO. ~A~
Thanks Amber – glad my secret junk closet is endearing. 🙂
This is so not what I was expecting, and I have new respect for you because the curtain and valance thing are brilliant! I’d probably just have had my t.p. and gift wrapping crap in there with no curtain. Also I’d have totally snooped. One more thing – it also annoys me that some kitchens are carpeted, because hello spilled stuff.
Exactly. I assume people will snoop, which is why I hide all my s&m paraphernalia in a locked closet.;)
I guess using it as an extra closet makes sense. I only have a 1.5 bath house so I am relegated to sticking extra stuff in every other nook and cranny. Also, carpet in a bathroom always seemed so odd to me and yet when you look at houses you often find that, not quiet sure why.
I don’t know why either, Mike. Cheaper than a hard floor maybe? Not worth it, if you ask me.
I love your out of the box way of thinking! I’d peek just to catch a glimpse of complete awesome!
Yep, I’m sure the glimpse of dog food and wrapping paper is not as exciting as snoopers hope for.
I wouldn’t call it non-traditional. I’d call it creative use of extraneous space! 🙂
I like that, Lisa. I just had to make it fit for the prompt – you know how that is!
Too funny, my attic is in my 3rd unused bedroom.. It’s a lost easier to get to all the holiday decorations! I’ve actually, as part of my paring down and donating for 2014, managed to keep only what is necessary. We all have our hidey-holes.
Barbara @ http://www.allmylivesnow.com
We do – I’m sure we could do some paring down too. But we do need our toilet paper, and the shower is a perfect place to store that huge 30 pack!
You really cracked me up with this! As a lifelong Charmin user, I just switched to Costco. Please tell me that I’m not missing out by not using the Target brand! BTW, you get bonus points for your creativity!
Nope, we like the Costco brand of tp, so stick with it! The paper towels are Target brand. Thanks for the bonus points – can I trade them in for a new pair of shoes?
hahaha…Dana we all sail in the same boat.
We have this walk in closet in our fourth room that we have nothing special to store. Land up stacking all the junk in there…lol
life is all about compromises and are’aren’t we glad we have room to do so…lol
Absolutely. To have an extra shower that we don’t need? Very fortunate, for sure.
I love this post, and your clever storage (I have never peeked behind the curtain, but I will admit to looking in a few medicine cabinets over the years…)
And now you don’t have to peek, since I’ve posted the photos for the entire world to see! Nice to see you here, Erica, since it’s been too cold to actually talk to you in person. When will it be spring?
Love the shower curtain that looks almost like a beautiful bay window with that fabric!! Or a ballroom window… yeah that.
That would be a total WASTE of SPACE had you not put something in there for storage! i call that smart. But i would NEVER ever snoop there! Nah… I would have already gone through your drawers. lol
There’s nothing good in the powder room – the good stuff is in the drawers upstairs, Chris!
I hide all my dirty laundry in the shower when people come over. If they want to snoop, go ahead. They’ll just get a face full of stinky, dirty laundry!!
A natural consequence for snooping!
I don’t know why, but I laughed through this post. I think it was the shower-closet? Or maybe the line, “We do not buy particular toilet paper brands”…whatever it was, I giggled.
Wait, it was definitely the shower-closet, priceless.
LOL
This was such a cute post.
Thank you Ryan – your comment made my day! I love when my writing makes readers giggle or laugh. Well, when I intend it to, anyway. Which I did, so yay!
I am laughing out loud! Thanks for being brave and letting us peek behind your curtain! (Is there any way to make that NOT sound entirely inappropriate?)
I don’t mind you getting a little sassy with me, Stephanie. 😉
Ha, honestly if we had an extra shower, I’d be doing the same.
Most of our junk and things I can’t bear to get rid of wind up in our garage, which is scary to walk through at the moment.
We don’t have any room in our garage for any more stuff – as it is I usually hit something when I pull my car in!
OMG that is hilarious. I wonder how many people have peeked behind the curtain!!??
Probably many people, and I’m sure they were disappointed that there was nothing exciting in there. Serves them right!
Nice work with the nontraditional closet angle! I’m only sort of ashamed to admit that I’d totally snoop, if I knew there was something more than a shower behind the curtains. I always check the tub so I can judge people on what brand of soap and shampoo they use. Plus, you never know if there might be a dead body or something in there, right? No?
Umm…right? I’d hope they’d hide a dead body in a better place than the bathtub. I took mine out before I snapped the photo of my shower/closet 🙂
Good use of unused space, Dana. Very nontraditional, and very wise. I see we have the same taste in paper towel and toilet paper… 😉
You’re not particular either, Alison? I’d rather spend the money on something more fun than toilet paper!
Sometimes you just have to be clever with the space you have. I think you did a great job!
Thank you Laura! I’m happy with it too.
HaHa – I love this!!! It would be funny to see someones face if they really were snooping and pulled the curtain back. And what would they say?! Nothing because then you would know they were nosey!!!
The bathroom carpet thing kills me – we have it in our guess bathroom and have not changed it 10 years later!!
You too? and no boys have peed on it? Never mind; I don’t want to know. And I have a dog that only has accidents on carpet, so who am I to judge?
I think that’s pretty genius, actually! I love your bath/closet! Our home has zero medicine cabinets or any sort of pantry in any bathroom, even the master, so I totally understand lack of storage. There’s a big closet in the game room, which used to house a gazillion toys, but I recently turned that into MY storage for linens, extra pillows, etc. We bought a huge drawer tower from the container store for our master closet and it houses everything from clothes, to extra toothbrushes, to make-up (that I never use) That thing has been a godsend!
Also: carpet in bathrooms is the dumbest thing ever! Our first home had carpet in every bathroom, too. We changed it before we even had kids! It’s SO nasty.
It really is nasty. As soon as James started potty training we ripped it out. And I shouldn’t whine about storage; we actually have a good amount. But we tend to accumulate stuff to fill up all the closets…
Why did you strip off our lovely wallpaper? I shopped and researched for months for that! Ha! Kidding! I’m with you – cannot live with carpeting on the bathroom floor. A lovely friend invited us to enjoy her empty flat when we were in England a few years back. It was such a treat. However, I was astonished to see the bathroom. Even the tub – outside of course – was carpeted. Man alive. It was quite creepy.
Lol, Kelly – the wallpaper was very 80s. Clearly this bathroom carpet thing is a bit more common than I thought. Who knew?
I love that you store things in your shower stall. That just makes me feel a little better about how we “store” things around here. And I would NEVER post a picture of the ridiculous piles of boxes and unnecessary items that we have not stored properly! At least you know what is in your pile!;)
I clean it out annually, so I do know what’s in there. I go through cleaning spurts – I drive my family nuts when I start to go on one!
I love what you’ve done with your unwanted tub/shower! That’s so funny for those that snoop. I wish we had a normal sized bathroom as ours I call the smallest bathroom in the world. I swear it used to be a closet at one time. Hubby roughed in a powder room on the main floor but has yet to install a sink and toilet yet. That was 13 or 14 years ago now. Who knows maybe he’ll get to it this year. When we moved into our home there was carpeting in 1/2 of the kitchen. We ripped that up shortly after we moved in.
Lisa just commented about a kitchen floor too – what is up with that? People are nuts.
Bwahahaha. I love that you have a shower/closet. You are my people. Our very first home years ago had a fully carpeted master bathroom. It was the weirdest thing I’d ever seen. I’ve never heard of anyone else who encountered this! (although I do have a friend whose first KITCHEN was fully carpeted when they bought it. CAN YOU IMAGINE?!) –Lisa
A kitchen? Wow. The food smells that would just linger in that carpet – ewww. There’s a would you rather for you – would you rather carpet your kitchen or your bathrooms?
We had carpet in a bathroom in our house when we moved in, too! Luckily we finally got that fixed. It was gross!
I know – why do people do that? I don’t get it.
I would never have guessed and I am not a snooper either so I would have never known!! Your secret is safe with me! Hysterical!!
Thanks for keeping my secret,Michelle. Now if you ever visit me you’ll already know what’s in there. Maybe I’ll have made a dent in some of those gift bags by then.
This is the second we in a row I’m reading some great posts on finishing the sentence, but I just couldn’t think of anything to finish this week’s or last week’s! Sigh! I would have never guessed that there would be a shower curtain in there! I don’t really snoop when I go to people’s houses. Wouldn’t it be awkward if you got caught? LOL.
Have you ever heard of people putting loose marbles in their medicine cabinet? So if they have a snooper, all the marbles fall out and make tons of noise. I wouldn’t do that to my guests. I don’t snoop either; I’m just not interested in what’s in there. There is a such thing as too much information, anyway!
I love this! We had a door-less half bath for 12/13 years. Then we hung a curtain for semi-privacy… So a look behind our curtain could have revealed a victim on the potty!
Oh – that’s one curtain I would not want to peek behind!
Wait, at least there’s not a psycho killer behind the shower curtain! There always is one!
I’d love to tell you what guests see when they sit on the toilet in our master bathroom. People don’t use that bathroom a lot, unless the other is in use.
Then they sit, get comfy, and notice Pete Townshend looking strung out and staring creepily at them from a poster across the way.
Thanks for the warning – that would totally freak me out! The worst you’ll find behind my shower curtain is a huge mess – a psycho killer wouldn’t have any room to stand in there.
Dana. I do not imagine you to be someone who has a stacked bathtub like that and I love you all the more for it. Also, my sister needed a cake decorating kit and it is now shoved in a closet at my mom’s house. It’s been there for about a decade now!
I’m not all neat and tidy, Jean – now you know my secret!
Dana, this made me laugh so hard, not because you do this, but because my grandmother always told me that when they were younger, my grandfather’s mother would actually come visit without notice. My grandmother was always on her toes and would try her best to have her house in order at all costs. My aunt (her sister-in-law) would shove as much as she could in the shower and close the shower door behind it to hide the mess she didn’t want this same lady to see. This is what you reminded me of tonight as crazy as it sounds! Thank you seriously for sharing, making me remember fondly my grandmother’s story and for linking up tonight 🙂
Most of my closets are in better shape than our shower/closet, but I still wouldn’t want anyone peeking in them! They have doors for a reason, right?