I recently had a lot of fun reorganizing a linen closet for a client. I like talking about linen closets, because they are the perfect space to ease into organizing, if you are feeling overwhelmed by the thought of tackling an entire room in your house. Linen closets are easy places to start with because:
- They are small
- They usually don’t hold much emotionally laden items (ie. memorabilia)
- There is not a lot of question over what should live in a linen closet, unlike, say, a home office. In other words, they are easy spaces to organize because they are not spaces where you will get stuck making a lot of hard decisions.
Here is the linen closet before:
First, we pulled everything out so the client could figure out what to keep or toss. The client set the criteria for which types of towels and linens to keep. They decided that they would only keep things that were:
- Stain-free
- No holes, rips or missing hems
- In coordinating colors. Good-bye, gaudy orange and lime green beach towels!
We grouped the other items by category. So we had categories of:
- Towels
- Sheets
- Blankets
- Pillows
- Underclothes
- Socks
- Handbags
- Stuff to Be Ironed
Finally, we designated one shelf/half-shelf per category, and put everything away. Most frequently accessed categories went at eye level.
As a finishing touch, I made labels for each shelf or basket so the client would remember how we set everything up.
And voila! Here is the finished linen closet (pardon the crummy resolution of this photo):
This project cost next to nothing in terms of supplies — just $2.50 for a package of gift tags from Michaels that I used as hanging tags/ labels.
So if you are feeling overwhelmed by your house and need an easy organizing project that makes you feel like you have done SOMETHING, I suggest you start with your linen closet. Happy Organizing, Everyone!
