An Organized Linen Closet

Wendhurst Castle has been our home now for two and a half years. In that time we've fixed up a bunch of the rooms, and we're working on a bunch more of them. (Like always) So there is always renovation going on, but one of the less talked about things I am always doing in our house is finding ways to make it work better for us. I remember when we moved in, because we were working on so many rooms at once, we put all the boxes into the dining room. Then, after they were unpacked, and the items placed in their appropriate rooms, I lamented to Lover the fact that we actually had less storage in this new house than we had in our apartment. Lover looked at me like I was insane. To his credit, the house has 1,600 square feet plus a finished basement and attic, effectively making our square footage closer to 3,000. And our apartment had about 700 sq ft. So I do see his point. But, in my defense, the problem was I hadn't figured out how to use this new space efficiently. Yes, it had tons more room (especially storage room) but I hadn't yet figured out how to make it work for us.

That's a long winded way of telling you that I recently revamped our linen closet, and I love how it's working out.  It took me two and a half years to figure out how to best make it fit our needs, and while I am sure that I will continue to tweak it in the future, for right now it makes me absolutely happy.



One of my biggest hangups, oddly enough, is that it is called a linen closet. See, we have huge, deep builtin chests in the bedrooms that store all our extra sheets and blankets. But our bathroom is super duper small, so there's lots of extra stuff like toilet paper, hair dryers and extra soap that doesn't fit in the bathroom. Do you see where I am going with this? I needed to convert the linen closet into a simple storage closet.

(the before)

Now you might think that when I say "convert" I meant a massive construction overhaul. Actually, I didn't change anything about the way the closet is laid out. The shelves are exactly the same. I just changed how I stored things on the shelves, what I stored in there, and most importantly, how I thought of that little closet. I know, I am weird. Whatev. :-)

Okay. Back on task. A while back Jen from A Thousand Words suggested that I buy bins that were the depth of my very deep shelves and use those to corral everything inside them. This was a brilliant suggestion. I found the perfect blue and brown, lightweight ones at Lowes, and hauled them home to try them out. One corrals toilet paper, and the other wrangles all the unwieldy hair stuff - hair dryer, curling iron, clippers, etc.





The towel shelf got a makeover when I put our infrequently used beach towels behind our regular towels, so that now the ones we use regularly are front and center.

Toiletries are corralled into four smaller bins on the top shelf, and small toiletries like new razors and sundries are in two teeny baskets at the very top.



The bin at the very bottom holds some miscellaneous decorating supplies. I used to have a bin of decorating stuff for every season, but now I've pared down quite a bit, and I just have one for fall. So this one in the closet holds miscellaneous other decorating baubles. It's working out perfectly so far. :-)

So that's the story of how I managed to find a sliver of organization in this huge house that "has no storage" ;-) I know, I'm crazy, but I have to say, I love how this little closet is working out for us. Oh, and the best part? Somehow I managed to free up two vanity drawers during this overhaul. Who hoo! :o)