Smarter Living: 5 cheap(ish) items you need in your bathroom

Smarter Living: 5 cheap(ish) items you need in your bathroom

Thursday, September 14, 2017

Tim Herrera
Smarter Living Editor

I am a fiend for bathroom organization and products, so I constantly pore over top bathroom picks from Wirecutter, the product recommendation site owned by The New York Times. I’ll take any chance I can get to better organize my mess of under-sink cleaning products, or upgrade my shower curtain or buy a new plunger. (Yes, I live an astonishingly exciting life.)

Wirecutter has a truly incredible array of bathroom product recommendations, so here are five of my favorite items. But really, do yourself a favor and revamp your bathroom life.

(And if this puts you in a cleaning kind of mood, here is the Smarter Living guide to cleaning your bathroom — and the rest of your home, natch — by the Smarter Living friend and noted clean person Jolie Kerr.)

A good pair of tweezers

O.K., yes, I know this sounds like a small potatoes, but hear me out: I’ve spent most of my adult life buying the same pair of cheap tweezers from Duane Reade every few years when I inevitably lose my pair in a move.

But this year, I took the plunge and invested in the Tweezerman Slant Tip, and my life (and eyebrows) hasn’t been the same since. For those who are still where I was, debating whether $16 is too much to spend on a pair of tweezers, I’m here to tell you: It’s worth it. Pick up the Tweezerman Slant Tip, Wirecutter’s top pick. An electric toothbrush Likewise, for those of us who have been putting off taking the plunge and getting an electric toothbrush, yet again this is a product more than worth the investment. From Wirecutter, “powered electric toothbrushes have been shown to provide superior dental care to manual toothbrushing — they remove more plaque and reduce gingivitis at statistically significant rates.” The Oral-B Pro 1000 is their top pick. Under-sink storage Instead of blindly throwing cleaning products under the sink when you’re done with them (guilty), make better use of that space with a set of small drawers that will turn your unwieldy forest of spray bottles and cans of Comet into a tidy monument to cleanliness. Wirecutter’s pick from their small bathroom storage review is this silver two-drawer mesh organizer from The Container Store. A bathroom trash can you don’t hate Again, hear me out on an item that feels like small potatoes: Who among us hasn’t been using the same bathroom trash can for five years because why waste money on … trash? But! These simplehuman trash cans are the ones all of your cleanest and most-organized friends use for a reason. They’re attractive, resilient, compact and fit every space. For your bathroom, the 10-liter simplehuman bin can’t be beat. A functional shower caddy This is my white whale of bathroom products. For years I’ve been buying, testing, trashing and rebuying an endless line of caddies I end up hating. Suctions cups, wire frames, plastic, weird grippy things around the shower head … they never satisfy. Luckily, Wirecutter spent 15 hours digging into more than 100 caddies (!) and made my decision for me: this one from OXO, for around $30. What are the bathroom items you can’t live without? Let me know at tim@nytimes.com and put “Bathroom” in the subject line, or tweet me @timherrera. —Tim