Cheap Ways to Decorate a Bathroom

Pleasant Pooping Places for the Poor

You can have a cozy, well-decorated bathroom without buying gold-plated toothbrush holders, ugly plastic tissue box covers, or strangely shaped stuffed animals designed to hold extra toilet paper. Avoid these tacky accoutrements, and carve out a kitschier potty niche with these cheap ways to decorate a bathroom.

1. TP your Bathroom (sort of)!

Use new toilet paper rolls, which we all know are cheaply purchased in bulk, to create practical décor through shape repetition. One of the effective yet cheap ways to decorate a bathroom is to use necessary items that would already be in the space, thus eliminating the need for decorative add-ons. In the case of new toilet paper rolls, they can be stacked, packed, shoved, squeezed, or heaped into a pleasing form. And white matches almost everything! If you’re having trouble visualizing this, here are some examples: 

a. Identify an exposed shelf and stack a lot of toilet paper neatly in repeating rows, rather than hiding it inside a cabinet. The repetition of the soft cylinders, either standing upright or resting on their sides, creates a simple and functional pattern. 

b. Find a large basket or basin (wicker, wire, whatever!) and just throw a bunch of new toilet paper rolls into it haphazardly, creating a cheap heap. You can’t get much faster or easier, and this actually looks cool on the floor. If you have a large bathroom, imagine a funky metal washbasin just piled with clean, white, happy geometric forms. 

c. Line up a few toilet paper rolls, side by side and place one short fake flower in each (you may need to trim stems). Fake flowers are usually awful, but this idea is kitschy enough to work as long as you don’t overdo the silk flowers. The trick is simple repetition.

2. Bucket-o-Toiletries.