Ready for a New Lease on Life? Start With the Bathroom

With kids starting a new school year, cooler weather arriving, and leaves beginning to fall from the trees, Autumn is a season of reinvention—and a great time to get started on a new chapter of your life. If there’s a change you’ve been putting off or a goal that you’ve been dragging your feet on, why not throw your mind, body and soul behind it now?

Every journey—no matter how long—has to begin with a single step. And I happen to believe that first step should happen at home: You need to make sure your sanctuary supports the new you. It might mean rearranging food inside the fridge so the best stuff is right up front, or cleaning out the closet to make sure you’re left with only clothes that make you feel your brightest. However the mission manifests itself, the goal is to design a home that makes it easy to take on the important work you’re facing—whatever it may be.

But I know the task of reforming your home to fit your new life is itself a major undertaking; a laborious journey that requires you to think about it in smaller steps just to get it done. And for that challenge, I offer this advice: Start with the bathroom.

It’s a forgotten place, the bathroom, for how amazingly influential it is in any home. Think of any other room you’d miss as much, if you had to give it up. Try selling or renting a home with no bathrooms. It’s a small space, and a space where you likely spend the least amount of time at home, but the bathroom is so, so important to your life and its rituals. And truly, if you’re working to make your home support your new habits, the bathroom should be the place you begin.

First of all, the bathroom should be the first place you work to get clean and organized. Whatever your goal is, or the new chapter you’re starting, the bathroom is where you start and end your day. And it functions like a personal war room—a space where you suit up and put on war paint to take on the day. Make sure that everything has a place—investing in some special organizers, if you need to—so you’re able to get ready in the mornings and turn in at night with ease, every time.

The bathroom is a private place. Even if you share the use of it with family or roommates, you’re alone most of the time that you’re in there. And it’s a place where you’re often vulnerable—and quite literally naked. So make sure the elements within the space itself—the color, the temperature, the lighting, the decor—all work together to make it a place you feel happy and at ease.

The finishing touch on a fresh and inspiring bathroom is a spotless mirror. There’s an almost-supernatural significance of a clean mirror: You should be able to see yourself clearly to truly witness and know that the new you is happy, healthy and moving in the right direction.