Before and After Linen Closet | Organize your Life

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I know I’ve been fairly meta at the Nest here lately (blame blog conferences – they bring out the “how to blog” blogger in me), so today I thought I’d go back to roots for those of you that are getting sick to death of my blogging about blogging.  Enter stage left:  the linen closet.

Here is what she looks like now:

…and this was how she looked before:

Of course that is not even the full story of the “before”.  I had already dragged a couch load of stuff OUT of the linen closet before snapping the photo, so imagine a closet full to bursting with sheets, pillows, cleaning supplies and lampshades (?)  So needless to say, it was not functioning well.  The solution?  Clothespins and a trash bag.

The trash bag took out some stuff that I hadn’t used in years – some linens into the compost bin, the rest of the junk in the trash.  What was deemed "usable” on at least a monthly basis got prime real estate back in the closet.  #1 on the list?  Pillowcases.  Do your kid’s pillowcases smell as badly as mine do after a few nights?  Even if I don’t change out the sheets, I change out the pillowcases because they can get gross.  So, front and center, folded and tagged; there are the pillowcases.  That lineup of clothespins makes me unbelievably happy.  Weird.

Next to the pillowcases came their partners; the sheets.  Sheets are the #1 frustration out of this closet which is ridiculous.  It is a linen closet for Pete’s sake!  The problem is we have sheets that range the gamut from twin to full to queen to king.  The other problem is that I like basic white sheets.  Mix the two and you never know which sheets are which.  So I went organizing ninja on them and tagged each sheet with the size and room it goes in.  Yes, it is extra work.  Yes, it makes my life SO much easier!

Just so y’all know, this type of uber-organizing only takes place in spaces where boys never go.  I would never tag my kids toys or clothes because they will be rummaging around in the bins/drawers/boxes and un-organize it in a heartbeat.  The linen closet though?  Yeah, nobody but me is going in there, so I can go crazy tagging in there.  It makes my life easier and makes me happy to see everything all lined up in a row.

So that’s all folks. 

A basic “rip everything out of the closet, throw half away and reorganize the rest” story.  It works every time!

What have you been organizing lately?

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