Small Bathroom Ideas | Reviews by Wirecutter

Medicine cabinet organizers

This is the best organizer we’ve found for holding toiletries of all sizes. Its narrower dimensions leave more room for storing other bulky items on a medicine cabinet shelf.

Medicine cabinet organizers are especially useful for keeping things like mascara, thermometers, and other tubes upright, minimizing the amount of space they’d take up lying horizontally. After testing four, we liked the iDesign Linus Medicine Cabinet Organizer. It has the smallest cubbies for vertical storage, and at only 7 inches wide, it doesn’t take up the entire width of most medicine cabinets. The four vertical storage cubbies in the Linus easily fit items like mascara, but its wider cubbies could fit a handful of Q-tips or a box of floss. And the clear plastic makes it easy to see what you’ve stored and easy to clean.

If you have a larger medicine cabinet, we also liked the 12-inch-wide iDesign Med+ Makeup and Medicine Cabinet Multi-Level Organizer, because it had plenty of vertical storage, easily fit dental floss and Band-aids, and had some room to spare in the large central cubby for cotton balls or pads. If you want to keep your cotton balls in a small drawer, consider the iDesign Linus Cabinet Organizer with Drawer.

Drawer organizers

Top pick

Even though these are kitchen-drawer organizers, we like their height and durability for bathroom drawers.

After testing three types of drawer organizers, we found the iDesign Kitchen Drawer Organizer 6-piece set was the best, as it was more durable and came in more versatile sizes than the competition. Plus, it has non-skid rubber feet to keep the cubbies stable.

The iDesign kitchen cubbies are made of a thick plastic that won’t bend or break easily. At 2 inches deep, these compartments are also shallow enough to fit in most drawers. Not only is the iDesign more durable and sized better than others we tested, but these organizers also come in a six-pack, making it the perfect starter kit.

Also great

An organizer made from thicker plastic but still shallow enough to fit in most drawers, these are a better choice if you want to hand-select your containers for a perfect fit.

If you want to purchase individual containers to perfectly fit your drawers, we recommend the iDesign Linus Shallow Drawer Organizers. These are made of thicker, more heavy-duty plastic than the other iDesign containers, but they come in the same 2-inch depth (ideal for fitting into shallow drawers). Although we did not bring these in for testing, we checked them out at The Container Store and feel confident recommending them. They’re the same style as the 3-inch-deep Linus organizers we tested and liked (but thought were too deep for most bathroom drawers).

Below-sink organizers

Top pick

These are the best-constructed shelves we’ve found. They don’t tip over (like other sets) and come with the option to screw the frame into your vanity for added stability.

Below-sink organizers make good use of the vertical space otherwise occupied by your pipes. Of the six drawer sets we tested, the Silver 2-drawer Mesh Organizer from The Container Store is best suited to fit below a small bathroom vanity because of its narrow-but-tall size and all-around superior durability. It requires no assembly, comes with durable mesh, and fits taller items better than the competition. A latching mechanism keeps the top drawer in place, and since the frame is all one apparatus, there is no chance of the top falling off like we saw with competing shelves. The Silver 2-drawer organizer also comes with four holes in the base so it can be screwed into the bottom of a vanity for further stability (a feature none of the other drawers we looked at had). It has slightly more clearance between its bottom drawer and top drawer, making it easier to store taller bottles either below or above.

For smaller spaces, these fluted plastic drawers do the trick, but with slightly less stability.

The Fowooyeen Bathroom Cabinet Organizer is cheap but very effective. It has non-skid feet that keep it securely planted, and its removable drawer dividers allow you to customize for your needs. At just 7.5 inches wide, 9 inches tall, and 12 inches deep, it’s ever-so-slightly smaller than The Container Store drawer option above and also about half the cost. However, it can’t be anchored at the base, and it does require some (straightforward) assembly.

Also great

This door-mounted caddy is the best solution we’ve found for storing a hair dryer. It also offers a little extra space for toiletries or cleaning supplies.

The Umbra Hide ‘n’ Sink Under Sink Caddy slips right over the door of a vanity cabinet, leaving floor space free to store other items. It has a unique slot designed for storing a hair dryer, something that none of the other bathroom accessories we looked at were explicitly designed to do, but it’s also a good solution for storing sponges or other cleaning supplies. The metal hooks peek out slightly at the top of a vanity door, even when it’s closed, which may bother some people.