Upstairs bathroom shelves: cleaned! Mostly!

Today's decluttering was in a more common area: the upstairs bathroom. There's this weird little nook in the upstairs bath with some makeshift shelves that I tried to tidy up with baskets and shelf liner when we moved in. It worked, sort of, in that it looked better than the ancient shampoo-encrusted crapfest it was before. But the problem I find with baskets as catchalls is that they really do catchall, and then all gets buried under all the other all. So a purge is necessary once in a while to keep you honest, you know?

Here's the before. One thing you may note is the nearly-empty bottle of, what, five-year-old Salon Selectives Perfectly Normal on the lower left there. There is also a travel bottle half full of the same shampoo, which was discontinued several years ago, much to Peter's chagrin. You see, back in college Peter had some reason to try out Lucky Lindy's Pomade or whatever, and found it more or less amounted to creamy, tarry Vaseline. The only shampoo that removed the grease satisfactorily was Salon Selectives deep cleaning. Later, impressed with pomade removal level the deep cleaning line displayed, Peter discovered their Perfectly Normal shampoo perfectly suited his perfect locks, and a loyal customer was born...until eight or so years later, when they stopped making it. Once word got 'round whatever fruity Salon Selectives fan club Peter was in that the brand was kaput, we bought a case of twelve bottles from Drugstore.com to delay the inevitable, but many months later, that sad day was nigh. He has since tested any number of shampoos but none came close to the glory of Perfectly Normal, and he and his hair haven't been the same since, really. So while he can't bring himself to use the last seven or eight hair washes those few ounces represent, he can't throw it away, either, so it just sits there. Sad, isn't it?

And now that I've brought you down with that sad tale of love lost, here's the after. I trashed a bunch of products that I haven't used in months or that just didn't work (such as that stupid foam hair remover that didn't remove a goddamned thing but the top layer of my leg skin.) Wiped down the shelves, but no time to replace the liner; maybe I'll do that tomorrow in conjunction with another purge. And then I straightened up the rest. It's better, if not perfect. Actually, this decluttering project made me realize how discontent I am with this particular setup. The shelves don't fit right, the painting is all slapdash, and it's just sort of ghetto. Plus the little scrap of carpet at the bottom is just weird. So with that, I have added another spot to my mental list of things to fix around the house. Sigh.

Still, it's better than a sharp stick in the eye, no?