the first picture is not a soap dish, it's a place to hold a cup.

Um - That first pic isn't a soap dish. It's a toothbrush holder, and the center recess is for a cup (preferably plastic?) to use when rinsing your mouth.

As you said, one could use it as a candleholder (which I do in the guest bathroom) or possibly to hold a vase or a pump soap dispenser...
...or you could put the cup inside the hole and use that to hold the tube of toothpaste and the toothbrush and put the razor in one of the little toothbrush holes.

I think the basic Oral-B toothbrushes still fit (tho I use a Sonicare)

a bud vase

The one pictured is a cup holder, but candles are a great thing or pump soap dispensers.

You can hold them in place by using a little sticky adhesive, the kind used for holding candles in candle holders, it works great and doesn't mind getting wet.

I have found that the natural bristle brushes from Fushes or Swissco fit very well in the holders and they look very attractive to boot.

My soap dish holder is more of a cubby and it holds a simple kitchen timer. If I didn't set it for 15 minutes, I'd be in that shower forever! It's bad, but I totally lose track of time in there.

maybe a small vase/teacup with flowers?

or a shot glass ;)

If the holes for the toothbrushes are round and the right size, you can put test tubes in them and use them as bud vases. Flowers in the bathroom are always cheerful.

For candles, I would soften them a little and then set them into the dish. It's often the ridged or curved shape of the soap dish that makes candles tend to fall out. This works better with more expensive candles; cheap wax has a higher melting point.

I have a built in soap dish like this, but it's in the shower so I rarely think about it. I'm not loyal to any brand or type of soap, so if the soap fits I use it and if it's empty, it's no big deal.

Mine actually fit a small juice glass from crate & barrel perfectly. No tipping. And I was thrilled when I found out my preserve toothbrush fit the holder, as well. Seems as though a tealight candle could fit in pretty much all of the cup holders. Perfect for when you have company, too.

I actually have bought some wood to create a platform that will span across from the cup/toothbrush holder to the soap holder and hide the more unusable parts underneath, but I haven't made it yet to share a photo...

I have a glass that fits the cup holder. Unfortunately, it's an Eeyore cup leftover from years ago, and I still haven't found the right size cup to fit. The soap dish holds whatever remnant of hotel soap my husband is trying to use up, until we have guests over, at which point it gets thrown away because it just looks nasty.

I've got a small clear-glass vase in the soap holder, and my favorite perfume bottle in the cup portion of the toothbrush holder. They're set too high for me to be able to put flowers in the vase in without blocking the medicine cabinet door, so I filled it part-way with tiny sea shells.

Queenbee, I'm going to use your solution - I swear I fall asleep standing up in the shower!

I keep a shotglass in my cup holder. Most of the time it holds my contact lens case but occasionally I wash i out if I need to use it as a glass to rinse my mouth.

The soap dish near my sink in my current apartment is recessed and utterly useless for soap. I use it to hold hairclips and rings.

I have a piece of coral in the soap dish and one in the toothbrush holder. One piece is punctuated with a red glass bead.

I try not to draw attention to mine or further clutter the bathroom by putting anything permanent in mine.

A large seashell fits nicely on mine.

preserve toothbrushes slip right though ours - but i like keeping them inside the cabinet anyhow, ew to airborne particles. i've been wondering what else to do with it. a seashell is a great idea!

I've popped my tweezers and nail clippers in the toothbrush holes.

Might be cool with a very small plant, maybe one that hangs over the pot. The tricky part I'm sure would be finding something that fits the spot.

I have a small round dish that fits perfectly that i fill with fresh lavender.

I put a shot glass on mine, with q-tips in it. No use yet for the toothbrush holes.

My husband's razor hangs in the toothbrush holder. We have delightfully simple Muji soap and lotion dispensers on the soap holders.

The bathroom I have now has two soap dishes -- two!! Simple solution? After using a candle that was in a small glass jar, I cleaned it out and placed q-tips in mine. There went one dish. The other? A small glass votive holder holds my bobby pins. These items are in quick reach for busy/hectic mornings!

I use a bottle of Mrs. Meyers hand soap -- it fits the little groove in mine quite well.

I have the exact same tiles in my bathroom, but years and years of wear and tear have made them look kind of gross. Any cleaning suggestions? How can I get my now brownish-white tiles back to their original white? Bleach doesn't seem to work.

Yeah, I have a votive candle (in a green holder) sitting in my cup holder. I like it.

i always think of re-purposing them to serve as wall brackets to attach a shelf to. i feel like some kind of "rubber cement" would prove to adhere well, be waterproof, as well as removable if you're renting and need to restore it back to original form.

i have the same problem with old tile towel rod brackets in my shower...i'm thinking of cementing shelves on top of them to serve as a shower shelf.

I purchased a 7-piece set of these vintage bathroom accessories on Ebay. I'd always assumed they were cemented in or something, they look and feel so permanent, but they're actually easy to remove. There is a back plate that you screw into the wall (two screws, one over the other, for stability). It's narrower at the top than at the bottom, and the right/left sides are bent forward (away from the wall) slightly.

The back of the soap dish has a cutout that allows you to slide the dish right onto the metal back plate. It fits snugly and is held simply by gravity. Then you just grout around your soap dish and you're done.

Here is a dish being sold on Ebay that gives a view of what I'm describing:

http://cgi.ebay.com/50s-Pink-Porcelain-Soap-Dish-RETRO_W0QQitemZ220471514619QQcmdZViewItemQQptZArchitectural_Garden?hash=item33552055fb&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14#ht_500wt_1036

So really, if you want to remove these from your bathroom, you should be dealing only with a couple of screw holes (the exception is the shower/bath soap holders that are recessed into the wall). And if you're lucky, the screw holes will be in the grout instead of the tile. :)

Why are you looking at this as a problem? I love these. Especially compared to the tacky stuff sold to be put onto a sink/vanity. Why wouldn't you want the tile utility onyour wall?

When I read something like this I can't help but think "if you don't like living in a city, go back to where you came from". No better way to brand yourself as a yokel than 1) to cross only at the corner when the light is green, or 2) complain about items of high utility in a city environment.

kushkush: No. As the post pointed out, many people don't use their soap dishes because they prefer liquid soap, and many people don't use built-in toothbrush holders because they don't fit most modern toothbrushes. But go ahead and feel superior to the "yokels" who don't like these things.

Ok, so didn't you guys also hear, always keep toothbrushes inside the medicine cabinet, as open toilets fluhed send a fine spary up to 6 feet, same for glasses, don't use for that purpose, I would use a candle!!!

kushkush--seriously? What an arrogant and unnecessary comment.

If you've got nice tiling then look hard for a small glass to fit and buy some of that slice-it-yourself soap from Whole Foods to cut a soap size to fit. I had these in an older house and basically used them as a decorative element. Children's toothbrushes fit.

If you have bad tiling then take the thing off if it bugs you. Hammer out several other strategic tiles to make this look intentional and fill in the holes with mosaic.

If you have 2 toothbrush/soap holders that are placed at the same height on the wall, one could place a board across them to make a shelf. You could then run a couple of bolts through the toothbrush holes to stabilize the shelf.

i don't have one of these, but i love the idea of putting a vase in it - then flowers, toothbrushes etc in the vase.

A stack of Dixie 3 oz. paper bathroom cups fits almost-perfectly in the cup holder. (If they're wobbly, put a small heavy traditional shot glass in upside-down first to support them).

We have two in each bathroom in our new apartment and I have been wondering about what to do with them. Thanks for all the ideas!

Emily

15 minute showers? (queenbee1230) Really? Here in Australia we are asked to take 3 minute showers because of the drought.

They are there to be used. There are plenty of glasses and toothbrushes and soaps that fit them. Not sure I see the problem here...

if you have to ask your an asshole....

hahaha... the best comment came from erinorea

seems like a silly posting to me......

This is hardly a creative option, but I just lay my toothbrush and toothpaste horizontally on the holder...my sink area is very small and otherwise I'd have no where else to put them!

Our toothbrushes don't fit in ours, either. But I did find a cool coiled metal cup-type thing that fits in the cup holder and I stash all the toothbrushes in there.

When we re-do the bathroom, that's the first thing I'm whacking with the sledgehammer.

My question has always been were these once happily used? Or was a design element that took off without ever receiving any critical feedback? I understand toothbrushes probably used to actually fit into the holes, but the whole inset soap holder (or the little recessed soap section built into a sink) is just a messy pain to clean - and that's why I don't use them. I can't imagine they were any easier to clean 50 years ago either.

Our bathrooms are so old--oops! I mean " original vintage"--that they have the built in chrome swivel thingy that hides toothrush & cup holder. And we don't even live in an urban environment anymore. Pity us!

I keep my thing of floss there.

Home body, as an earlier poster noted, many of them are not actually nearly as permanent as you think; they often slide down over a metal bracket. Mine are a piece of cake to slide off and scrub clean.

one day i hope to move to the big city and have such a fancy toothbrush holder. and to be so urbane as to cross the street when the light is red--sigh!!!

Home body, we had them in our house growing up, which was built in the early 50's. I don't remember them getting dirty, or cleaning them. I didn't do any cleaning. My mother did that, so maybe she cleaned them. We had the little sinks that hung on the wall, with chrome legs for support. Our toothbrush holder was chrome, too. Our toothbrushes did fit in them. They weren't all ergonomic and all that. The soap didn't have it's own holder, but there was a small space on the side of the sink for it.

Just how does this effect every day life?

I keep negative space on there, for artistic emergencies.

those are ugly and totally worth removing even if it leaves a hole.

We have these, a soap dish and a toothbrush/cup holder, in each bathroom. As someone else mentioned, clippers and tweezers fit in the toothbrush holes perfectly. Although, people here have mentioned the toilet-spray issue, so maybe some would not like spray on clippers or tweezers anymore than their toothbrush. I'm afraid it doesn't bother us (well, it does with the tbs, they're in the cabinet). And a box of floss fits in the cup part and is easy to grab and easy to remember to do.
The soap dish, I don't know. Maybe ours weren't installed properly but they angle down. Everything slides forward and right off the front, so they're empty. Maybe using those sticky dots I read about would help keep something or other in place.
And, be careful if you're assuming the ones in your home slide off a plate in the back. That was the only kind I was familiar with and ours "stick out" from the tile wall they're on, like, the caulk is on top of the neighboring tiles. So I whacked off one with a hammer thinking a tile would be underneath. So wrong. The soap dish narrowed and went *into* a space without a tile and now we have just the ugly back of the soap-dish-thing staring us in the face with a worm of cement ooze coming out through a central hole. It's terrible. :(

Funny this is re-posted now as just this week I covered our very awful aluminum on tile version (no, it doesn't come off) with smooth tin foil. Then I scooped up some moss from the garden with a sprig of fine grass growing from it and placed it on top of the foil. A tiny fawn walks through. Second bathroom is destined to have a polar bear scene. I put a tiny candle holder in the cup holder and it holds small blooms. A small delight for hand washers and much better than it used to be.

I have a Glade??? candle (the one with the rounded bottom fits perfectly) in the toothbrush holder and the soap dish holds a small clock. Candle is good for parties as it's not in the way and the clock tells me how late for work I'm going to be...

I love these things! They're a very handy bit of storage over an old wall-mount sink with no counter space. I keep two white Corelle mugs in mine. The one in the cup holder I use for drinking/rinsing; the one in the soap dish holds my toothbrushes. I thought the actual holes for toothbrushes would be too hard to clean so I don't use those. And there's just enough space in the soap dish left for my box of dental floss.

Measure your holder. Then go to your local hardware store and ask them to cut you a piece of glass or plexi to that dimension. While you wait, buy a tube of clear silicone caulk.
Go home, add a thin bead of caulk to the holder and place the piece of glass on top. Let it dry and voila! you have an instant mini shelf. Perfect for whatever your heart desires - a small clock to remind you the time while getting ready, a little piece of artwork or a bowl of mints.
If you want to get fancy you could go to a glass shop and get a thicker piece of glass with polished edges, like you would use for a table top made. If you need a round or oval piece, head to the frame shop.

Best part about that solution is when you're tired of the shelf, you can just take a razor blade to the caulk and release it. The rest will peel right off.

I found a tiny, pretty, saucer-type dish that fits almost perfectly (w/ a little bit of tissue wedged underneath) that I use to hold my hair pins and clips (sometimes earrings but I'm too afraid of knocking them down the sink drain to leave them there for long).

As to slippage, I had a problem with soap or soapdish slipping off the slightly slanted side of my small sink, but the only other place to keep it was the back of the toilet. I bought an oval soap dish, then squirted some strips of silicone caulk on the bottom. (Someone had done this on a rug to make it nonslip). Let it cure, instant nonslip.

I have a small picture frame for every morning inspiration (I have a picture of a mountainside in my moms home town in Vietnam) and the other I have a small Muji black rubber clock to keep track of time, plus the rubber provides a grip onto the surface. The holders look like little pedestals for my decorations.

Yes, I keep hair elastics, bobby pins, and tweezers in one, and a little candle in the other. Rather handy, actually.

The house we're buying has these:
(those are the current owners' fugly towels!)

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_hgNYkKJ1U9s/S3yvOV1jn-I/AAAAAAAAHhY/EdCxDZT55Kk/s1600-h/2-16-10 117.JPG

and I was kind of wondering what to do with them.

radioriot, I feel your pain - those marvels of ceramic aren't evenly spaced!

Toilet spray: wouldn't one close the lid of the toilet before flushing rather than potentially dousing the bathroom?

As to our own charming bathroom built-ins, the one for toothbrushes holds - gasp - toothbrushes! They lay sideways across the top of the ceramic. After a similarly radical decision, the soap dish holds a bottle of pump soap.

Although I do rather like the idea of building a shelf to lay across both, that would only lead to more stuff for the clumsy occupants of our house to knock about in their sleepy morning stupor.

Ahhh- I didn't even notice that, $180,000 later! Haha. Ahh well- its always the little things in an old house that are odd and sort of amusing.

I had one removed. It wasn't a big job. I had to have about 4 tiles in the surrounding area of the dish replaced. The cost wasn't terrible. I was having other work done at the time, so it was just a small add on cost. However, removing a soap/toothbrush dish is not a "do it yourself" project unless you've had experience tiling. Otherwise you might end up with a much bigger job and need to replace more than 4 tiles! I was much happier with the way my bathroom looked after the soap-dish was removed.

i used to have a small Sake cup in mine. Theyre small
and beautiful and in Asian stores they have so many styles you can find one that matches any bathroom.

stephenaslater, HAH!! Winning comment.

I placed a tea light candle holder filled with Q-tips & surrounded it with a few fake flowers in the toothbrush holders. Looks pretty nice & can be interchangeable.