The best bathroom trash cans under $50

Small bathroom bins almost all use a cheap sprung lid that snaps shut loudly and eventually stops latching. This uses the same damped mechanism as the kitchen cans at a fraction of the volume. In a bathroom that shares a wall with a bedroom, quiet is not a luxury feature.

This is the pick where Amazon Basics is genuinely hard to argue with. A soft-close lid and a removable inner bucket on a 6-liter bathroom can is specification you normally pay several times as much for, and the removable bucket is the part that matters most on a small can, because a small can is the one that gets a leaking bag in it. Plastic is also the right material next to a shower, where stainless water-spots.

Small cans are chosen by footprint, not capacity, and almost every buying guide gets that backwards. This one is 7 inches wide and 13.3 deep, so it fills a gap a 13-gallon can cannot enter, and it still has the two things that make a can pleasant: a pedal, and a lid damped so it closes quietly rather than clapping. Push the lid back after stepping and it stays open for a cleaning job. The inner bucket lifts out, so emptying it does not mean carrying the whole can.

Small cans are usually open baskets, which is exactly wrong in the two rooms that need them most — a bathroom and a nursery both benefit from a lid nobody has to touch. This one has a pedal at 2.7 gallons, and Sterilite lists it for a 4-gallon liner or a standard shopping bag, so you are not buying a special size. The removable inner liner is the detail that matters: when something leaks, the liner comes out and the shell stays clean.

It is worth being clear about what this is: not a thermal sealer. It holds the liner in place with suction and closes it when you pull, which removes the two small irritations that actually drive people mad - a bag that slips into the can, and wrestling a full liner out. For a narrow bathroom or a bedroom it does most of the useful work of a smart can for a fraction of the outlay, and if you decide the category is not for you, you have not spent much finding out.

The gap in most houses is not 13 gallons or 2.5 gallons, it is the room that generates more than a vanity basket holds and less than a kitchen can. This covers it: a narrow rectangular body, the latch on the short end of the lid so it opens along the can rather than into the wall, and standard 8-gallon liners. Sterilite lists the same body as a recycling bin, which is the honest second use — paper in an office fills a can faster than trash does.