The Bathroom Essential You May Want To Consider Getting Rid Of

Keeping things organized is important for getting the most use out of any room in the home. Beyond maintaining good hygiene, it's how you ensure a more pleasant and comfortable experience for everyone who uses the space. A tidy bathroom is especially key for achieving a good overall vibe in the house, as it's a frequently-used but compact space. That's why you need to use bathroom items that will make it easier to keep the space tidy instead of making it more challenging. To that end, one common fixture that doesn't help as much as you'd think is a towel bar.

A towel bar is almost always a given in a bathroom setup. Ideally, it's installed near the sink or shower so the hand or bath towels can be grabbed easily, but it doesn't always work in the space. In order to keep the bathroom tidy, towels on a bar constantly need to be folded and straightened. Missing that small detail will make the space look messy, even if everything else is in place. Consider swapping out towel bars for different fixtures like towel hooks or rings to avoid this problem.

Towel bars on the wall are nice for holding multiple towels in a bathroom, and some prefer them because they allow towels to dry faster than those hanging on a hook. However, unless you're committed to straightening the towels after every use, they can easily look messy. Further, if the bar is full, you may resort to hanging your towels over the shower door or simply keeping them bunched up on the floor, which obviously isn't ideal. 

The size and placement of the bar are other factors that make it a poor choice for some bathrooms. If you think about all the bathrooms you've been in, you've probably seen bars installed in various places. The ideal height for a towel bar is 48 inches above the floor so that the towels are easy to reach without touching the ground, but they are typically placed anywhere where they can fit. This leads to awkward placements that may be too close to the toilet or too far away from the shower. Towel bars that aren't proportionate to the space can also be awkward, especially in small bathrooms where everything needs to fit well. If the bar looks too large, it can feel out-of-place in the room.

If you get rid of your towel bar, consider installing hooks instead because they are much more versatile storage solutions. Since hooks don't take up much space, they can be placed basically anywhere, as long as they're high enough to accommodate the length of your towels. You can easily install one on the wall right next to your sink for hand towels and another next to your shower for bath towels, which is especially helpful if the shower and the sink aren't near one another. Further, this option also doesn't limit you to the walls. You can fix them on the side of a cabinet or shelf, which is great in small, tight spaces. 

Towel rings take up a bit more space than hooks, but they are also more versatile than bars. These are most often used for hand towels near the sink, and the benefit of a ring over a bar is that it's easier to place the hand towel on a ring without making it appear messy. When storing clean towels, another option is a ladder shelf. These are decorative and functional storage solutions that can give you a place to keep many towels in one compact area, along with other bathroom essentials. You could either fold the towels on shelves or hang them over the rungs of the ladder.