Mr. and Mrs. B: Solo updates around here

I woke up this morning with a plan, a plan to fix a few things that were just not right around here. Two problem areas to be exact.
1.) Our Utility closet disaster area.
2.) The Guest Bath broken towel holder in the tub. (yeah I know, I'll explain below)

Normally I involve Mr. B in these plans, well lets be frank, he usually does the majority of the work as I take on all creative control.
This time I was working solo. Mr. B has been tied up rebuilding a vehicle in our garage and that's a top priority. While I had elaborate ideas of how perfect my 2 projects could be in my head, I set out to town for supplies I quickly realized something.
I could fix them the easy way, or the time consuming and expensive way which happens to be the only way to achieve what my mind had made up.
Well guess what. I went cheap and easy folks, and I finished the projects in less than a couple hours and I am okay with that.

Sure they aren't quite what I wanted, but as a very smart and realistic woman once told me, "it's good 'nuff"

Project # 1. Utility closet.
Here is my very shameful and horrifying broom/utility closet, before.

Ahhhhh!!!

It's really bad, totally unorganized but very much used on a daily basis. This small cluttered closet is our broom storage, dog food closet, grocery bag hanging area, shoe storage, and it holds my rolling case full of tools and crafting supplies. Unfortunately the plan I had of turning it into a beautifully looking custom built-in storage area didn't quite make it in my budget for today.
So I turned this.

To this with a trip to the hardware store, and the local thrift store.

I paid $8.00 for this really heavy duty broom holder bracket. It keeps my long handled cleaning devices up and away from the floor, and therefore in a nicely sectioned off area in the closet. No more flopping around all over the ground.

I moved our hook rack to the back of the closet and much higher up, so it stores all of my reusable grocery bags up high, where there used to be a useless tiny shelf that I couldn't reach.

I also picked up this small wooded shelf and basket from a thrift store (that supports our local humane society) I set the rolling cart on top of it, along with Baxter's large ant proof food bin. On the bottom shelf I placed the basket that I am using to store smaller shoes and my old Ugg boots are just to the left. This is really helpful to have a place we can neatly store our "not so nice shoes" and keep them out of sight.

Not that pretty, but it's organized and it works so I'm happy.

Project # 2.
The guest bath broken towel rack tile things.
Have you ever been in a bath with a towel rack in it? No? Neither had I until we bought our home with one! The guest bathroom had a horizontal bar in it, kind of like the ones you could pull on to assist you while getting out of the bathtub, we quickly realized this was not made to hold much weight at all. So it must have been for towels? right?
Here it is broken. The bar was pulled on (over a year ago) and it snapped out breaking the two tile holders on either side.

It doesn't look too bad from the front.

But from the side the gaping holes that were left behind had sharp awful mortar sticking out, just at the right height to scratch the cr@p out of an unsuspecting arm. OUCH!

So in my head I was going to perfectly chip out the broken holder bases that were there, and find exact matching 4.25" square, off white tiles to replace them.
Well the nearest tile shop was a 30 min drive each way, and I didn't feel like spending more money on gas than the tile would be. So I chipped out the bases, and all that extra mortar and tiled in two of our extra Talavera tiles from our master bath renovation.
Tada! Cheap fix! Well actually free fix, since we already had all the supplies.