The Thrifted Fix: I Solved My Family Of 6's Toothbrush Clutter With A Spirited $4 Thrift Store Find

It was a novice mistake, thinking that a vintage biscuit table with a gigantic vessel sink perched on it leaves enough "countertop" around its edges for a family of six. Just hand soap and the occasional hair tie, right? Well, here's an actual partial inventory of what's on our bathroom vanity this very minute: small toothbrushes, guitar picks, large toothbrushes, hair goop, beard goop, a jaw harp, a comb, two hairbrushes, a hair pick, electric toothbrushes, a pencil sharpener, six tubes of toothpaste, and an SD card of unknown provenance. Something had to give, and dental cleaning gear seemed like the best target for removal to some other storage.

Oh, sure, a stylish or whimsical toothbrush holder can be astoundingly decorative in a bathroom, but the designers forget that, to an inquisitive 4-year-old, anything more interesting than a steel box takes on that certain je ne sais quoi of a toy. Once this idea is acted upon, there's no turning it back into a toothbrush holder (and you'll have to learn how to get a toothbrush out of a toilet in the meantime). Fortunately, we happened upon a more secure solution for $4 at a local thrift store, a steel box known as a speed rail. A speed rail is a stainless steel caddy used by bartenders to hold "speed bottles" ... those plastic pourers that hold sour mix, OJ, pineapple juice, and whatever nonsense is in a 'tini these days. You'll recognize the form immediately, because it's the most utilitarian thing you've ever seen — a long, frill-free box that mounts on a wall. Yet, somehow, the mysterious appeal of stainless steel makes them a nice-looking addition to most task spaces. And they hold a heck of a lot of toothbrushes.

Our bathroom seems to hold the full inventory of a small grocery's tooth care aisle. And unlike grocery store shelves, which hold boxed products upright in a reasonably orderly fashion, everything tooth-related in the home is shaped to prevent it from being stacked, racked, nested, columnated, or otherwise organized on a vanity countertop. This is amplified by the fact that every member of our family uses a different toothpaste and by the ever-helpful consumerism of grandparents. (Thanks again for another WaterPik, grandma.) My 9-year-old, for example, owns the most utterly inexplicable Rubegoldbergian toothbrush ... a sort of squat space traveler that vibrates alarmingly, emits UV light when you press the tummy, and has, perched upon his head, a U-shaped silicone brush that fits the teeth like a dental mold.

What we needed was a walled-off bin that could manage this random assortment and be positioned on a wall a little away from our beleaguered countertop, giving us bathroom storage that will maximize space elsewhere and keep everything conveniently accessible. Our thrifted bar caddy was perfect for the job. It contains all the toothy things in a sanitary fashion and attaches to the wall under a couple of small, glass-fronted cabinets that are mounted upside down (but that's a story for another day). Best of all, there's nothing to mounting it. It comes complete with a couple of screw holes to guide your way. All you have to do is level the caddy where you want it on the wall, mark the screw points so you can drill pilot holes, and screw it into place.

The only real challenge is that we have a bunch of other potential uses for the caddy. In fact, it didn't come straight into our bathroom but did work for a while affixed to the cabinet beneath our kitchen sink. This made sense, as wetness and bottles are what bar caddies handle best. Once you start thinking about all the places a stainless steel caddy might profitably contain things, the ideas seem endless. It's not hard to imagine such a caddy being useful by a laundry sink to hold the elixirs and implements of stain removal, and it's even less hard to imagine a bar caddy near a wet bar. Drill a couple of holes in the bottom, and you could definitely use one in the shower for all those disparately named concoctions that appear to do the same thing. It would also compare favorably to some of the best organizers to corral your hair styling tools and could attach to the door of a vanity for extra under-the-sink bathroom storage.

Stainless steel is amenable to being cleaned, making our little caddy an able helper anywhere crafts or children threaten order. It would also serve in my workshop to hold push sticks, tool-specific Allen wrenches, and lubricants ... but mostly to hold sawdust. I'm also thinking about bolting one to the side of my lawn mower, which is fitted with a cupholder insufficient to the onboard tool storage demands of a vintage machine. This could go on for a while, but I cannot. I have a mower to repair, and then I must brush my own teeth and get to bed.