Having a small bathroom can be a frustrating experience. On one hand, it’s a great luxury to not have to walk down the stairs in the middle of the night. On the other hand, if the space is difficult to maneuver and lacks storage, it can feel like a disorganized mess on the best of days.

While there are some “standard” bathroom sizes, people in older homes tend to cram bathrooms into them wherever they can, resulting in tiny spaces. If your bathroom is tiny, you may dream of expanding it and turning it into the primary bathroom of your dreams, but if that’s not in your budget, there are some more modest approaches you can take to make your small space a lot more comfortable, and a lot more usable.

If you have a door that opens into your small bathroom, you’re losing a lot of space to the door swing. Not only can you not install anything there or use it for storage (or for any purpose really), you also have to wrestle with the door to get in and out, especially if there’s more than one person in the bathroom at a time.

By changing the direction of the door so that it swings out of the bathroom, you can regain some of that space. You probably still can’t fit a storage cabinet in the middle of the floor, but the space will feel bigger, it will be easier to get in and out of, and you’ll have more room for a sink or other furniture.