Let’s discuss linen closets.  You know, the place in your home where you store extra towels and sheets?  And shampoo and tp and soap and bandages and cough drops and lotion and Tylenol and maybe an iron (we do at least).  I’m kinda proud of mine so I wanted to share it with you all.  Hopefully you can get some ideas or inspiration for improving your linen closet as well.

I used to rip everything out and reorganize my linen closet (whenever I had one) about two or three times a year.  No matter how diligent I was, the hand towels would get mixed up with the bath towels and I’d get sick of knocking over three bottles of lotion reaching for a new dry shampoo I bought when there was a buy one, get one 50% off sale at Target (man I’m a sucker for a volume deal).  I’ve also never been good at folding a fitted sheet.  I mean, is anyone, besides Martha Stewart?  I’ve watched videos over and over again but I just never get it quite right consistently enough to satisfy my anal particular ways.  When I moved in with my boyfriend I quickly realized his fitted sheet folding skills were even worse than mine (to be fair, he probably hasn’t watched multiple youtube videos on the subject) and I refuse to be the only one in the house to wash and put away sheets.  I might have specific tastes but I’m not one of those who will just take on all the house work because I like things done or looking a specific way.  I’m more of a ‘teach a man to fish’ type.  Luckily he is pretty receptive to my ‘suggestions’ (for the most part even though I’m sure he wishes I had far fewer).  I digress…

We are very lucky to have a large linen closet.  Even though we live in a 60-year-old apartment in Los Angeles, the closets are great.  The living room lighting and kitchen storage options and size are not.  More on kitchen deficiencies in the future but for now I’ll stick to positives.  We feel lucky to have so much room in the linen closet and we take full advantage (read: put a lot of crap necessities in it).  We have sheets, towels, extra toiletries, first aid and medicine, an iron and steamer (one of our BEST purchases…seriously, get one…so much easier than ironing), an extra receiver thing (bf’s), Costco buy overflow, an extra blanket and light bulbs. But, I don’t necessarily want to look at all of it (especially our fitted sheet mishaps) every time I open it.

After a couple months living together, it was time to organize the behemoth so I headed to my favorite place…the Container Store.  All the containers and label holders we used are from there and still available in store or on their website.  Those pesky sheets and towels were first priority and I opted for opaque bins for those.  The closet is really deep and I wanted to utilize as much space as possible so I found these deep pop up bins that fit the space nicely (and were on sale!).  I also like that they stand up but aren’t all ridged so they give a bit.  We organized the bins by type and room (master bedroom sheets vs. guest room sheets and master towels vs. guest towels vs. beach towels) and added some clip-on label holders.  The bf printed the labels on thick paper using a fancy font I found on Word, and I used a paper cutter (I can never cut straight with scissors) to cut the labels to the size of the holders and popped them in.  Note: more on making labels in a future post.  Now when we need something or need to put something away after it’s washed, we pull out the appropriate bin and add or take out as necessary.  Easy.  My fitted sheets are most definitely not perfect still but at least they are tucked away inside the bins and away from my critical eye.   Side note on sheets: if you don’t like bins, or want a free solution, you can take your sheet set and fold and store them within one of the pillow cases.

 

For the toiletries, I found these large, clear bins that allowed for easy stacking and allowed me to take advantage of the full depth of the closet (it goes almost 2 feet back!).  After going through all my products and tossing what I wasn’t ever going to use or what might have expired, I separated what was left into broad categories (hair, body, face).  My boyfriend’s family has a tradition of getting full sized toiletries in their stockings so I’m well stocked still.  Within each clear bin, I used smaller sized white bins to corral the smaller items and keep similar items together.  In the last nine years, I traveled a lot for work (and snagged top quality toiletries along the way).  I was also a member of one of those makeup subscription boxes for two years so I have a lot of minis and travel sizes!  Also note the small bin of six Vaseline pots that I bought after Easter last year when they were 70% off.  Told you I loved a discount!  For these containers, I used a self-adhesive label holder, printed out some labels on the printer and popped these onto the top shelf.  Simple.  Oh, should anyone be interested, the green and white striped bow headband is for St. Patrick’s Day only.  It isn’t something I bring out and rock on a typical basis.

First-aid and medicine were separated into their own deep, open bins for easy access and also labeled using the self-adhesive holders for ease.  Now in the unfortunate instance we cut ourselves, we can easily pull out the appropriate bin, grab the peroxide and a band-aid adhesive bandage (no sponsorship, no mention) without rummaging through a medicine cabinet.

The top shelf is where we also keep the iron and steamer (even though we rarely use the iron…seriously, get a steamer!).  I could have probably gotten a bin for them but didn’t see a need to as they are self-explanatory and self-contained items.

The last shelf is reserved for Costco overflow.  The items in here vary so much month to month that it hasn’t been worth doing any labeling.  Tangent: is it just me who always finds something new at Costco like every time?  It’s like Target on steroids.  Please tell me I’m not alone!  Anyway, because there isn’t a ton of consistency beyond the tp and paper towels, we just try to keep the shelf neat and don’t bother with bins or labeling there.  Now that I write about it though, I’m wondering if I shouldn’t snag three more of those pop up bins for this shelf too.  So far it’s been fine but I can see myself starting to itch for a more clean look there.  Damn you the Container Store.  Maybe I’ll pay them a visit this weekend.  And Costco because the shelf is looking a bit empty.

I hope you found this post interesting, informative, inspiring, or entertaining (I’ll take any one as a success).  If so, please let me know in the comments section.  Also let me know if there is anything you’d like to see on this blog by writing me at feedback@theorganizingblonde.com

 

XOXO,

The Organizing Blonde