Great article on bathroom plants...it's also worth thinking about them as a hanging plant from the ceiling or a small plant wall hanging flush against the wall, perhaps opposite end of bath from the shower? I love plants in bathrooms if they're looked after. It's a welcome sight of life in the morning :-) http://www.readersdigest.com.au/bathroom-plants

We keep all of our sharp knives in their own drawer, which has a magnetic bar to keep them in place and to stop them from rubbing on each other and losing their edge. I can't bear too much clutter out on the worktop. Besides, if a murdering maniac bursts in, I don't want to make it too easy for him. I'd like to think by the time, he's opened all the drawers to find the knives, the police will have arrived. LOL

I have cupboards under and next to the basin so there is lots of out of sight space for spares. I do keep what I need daily on the surface next to the basin but they are in glasses in a colour that goes with the room and I've arranged them slightly artily so they look considered, not haphazard. That's my view - people who visit my house might think differently! Thinking about it, many of my friends keep everything hidden. When I had my loft converted in my previous home, the architect gave me a very pretty bag to take all my daily stuff in and out of the bathroom - the message was, keep them out of sight. Only remembered that right now. I think I'll have to rethink my routines!

We live in the country and get a fair amount of critters of various sorts. We have a commercial electricutor thingy with a UV tube for flies, which worked well but we noticed that we were also getting a few bees and hoverflies, zapped. So we have stopped using it now and have been trying out venus flytraps this year with a fair amount of success. I feel the number of flies has been less. As to other creepy crawlies, being in an old house, we get a lot of spiders, they either get ignored or safely captured and evicted. Last summer, we had a swarm of hornets that used to pitch up about 8.00 every evening and literally swarm around at the windows attracted by the lights - it was really quite horrific. It was such a nuisance too, as we couldn't open any windows or doors in the evening but we didn't know where the nest was, so we couldn't get rid of it. But they seemed to have not survived last winter, so none this year. But we've been plagued with wasp this summer, we actually had 6 different nests around the outside of the house and we had to have the pest man out a few times - I think it cost us nearly £300 in the end for all the call outs.