Everything looks better when you don't keep much!
A great place to start your organization plans is in your linen closet — it’s a fairly self-contained spot, and it’s hard to have too much of an emotional attachment to your old sheets and ratty towels. Here are some tips for getting your linen closet under control:
- Take everything out. This is where you discover the stack of t-shirts from your college sorority and the stack of swim diapers you bought for your youngest — who’s now 13.
- Remove anything that doesn’t belong. That means the hammer that goes in the garage, the spare paper towels, the cans of tuna you couldn’t fit in the kitchen pantry, the wrapping paper and Christmas ornaments.
- Toss the icky stuff. With bath towels selling for $3.99 at Bed, Bath & Beyond, there’s no excuse for keeping old, stained linens. If you can’t afford to replace everything at once, make it a habit to pick up a new towel or two each month — and throw out the old ones! Over the course of a year, you’ll have a whole new selection, relatively painlessly. My method: Each time we have an overnight visitor (a few times a year), I buy a new set of towels and rotate those into play.
- Stick with neutral colors. It may seem like a great idea to match your towels to your bathroom, but dark colors fade, and when your orange towels get accidentally placed in the lime-green bathroom, things don’t look so hot. Instead, choose a few neutral colors (white or beige are always great choices). In our home, we use white towels in the master bath, and everything else (all the mismatched leftovers) is fair game.
- Group like items together. Put bath towels together, sheet sets together, and extra soaps and toiletries in one spot. It makes it easier to locate what you’re looking for, and you can tell at a glance when you’re running low on washcloths and need to do a load of laundry!
- Maximize space. Use space-saving elements like door hangers, floor bins, and vacuum packs. Place the little-used stuff up high and in the out-of-the-way spots, and put the more used items — towels and toilet paper, for instance — where it can be easily accessed.
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