Ideas and Incentive to Organize Your Home- Week 4- Storage Closets

Hey friends!  Welcome to my new WordPress Blog!  There are still a few glitches and things that are being worked on an improved, but everything should be complete within a week or so.  Overall though, I am loving the changes, and I would love it if you would take the time to comment and let me know what you think- or point out any problems you see that may need fixed.  I am so excited for today’s post because today marks the last week of the 4 week declutter and organize your home challenge. Week one started with our kitchens, week two, we moved onto our craft and office spaces, week three the focus was on our bathrooms, and for the final week, we are talking about storage closets.  This challenge is hosted by myself and the rest of my friends from No Place Like Home. I have been really getting into this whole declutter and purge thing.  I have been trying to make some difficult choices to clear the clutter in our spaces.  Not only do we have some very useful tips and tricks for you to help you get your storage closets organized, but we are hosting both a link party and a giveaway for a $150 Container Store gift card!  We invite you to please link up your kitchen, craft, and office organization, bathroom or closet organization posts, or if you do not have a blog, you can just link up a picture if you like, and then be sure to enter to win the gift card!  And please mark your calendars so that you can be sure to join us for the rest of the month, when we will focus on a different area in our homes each week. Also, please be sure to visit each of the other hosts at the links below to see how they have organized and decluttered their spaces!

A Home To Grow Old In | Hey Fitzy | Nourish and Nestle | Sweet Parrish Place

Paint Yourself A Smile | The Red Painted Cottage | Savvy Apron | The Aspiring Home |

 

Today’s post is not what I had planned.  I wanted to show you a before and after of my new linen closet mini makeover full of pictures of the before and after.  Unfortunately, our puppy chewed on my memory card.  The card contained all of the before pictures of this closet.  I had not imported them yet, so sadly, they are lost forever.  So all I have to show you is the after of this space.  I am bummed that you won’t be able to see the transformation of this space, only the after photos, which I had to reshoot.  So you are just going to have to imagine how this space looked before I got started with the big purge.  This closet was literally stuffed so full that I could not fit another thing into it.  I purged an entire black trashbag of things from this closet, and some things were donated.  I completely emptied out this closet and got rid of so much!  I am very happy with how this linen closet turned out.  So I guess I can’t complain in the end.  This little makeover all started with three baskets that I picked up at Goodwill, and you can see one of them pictured below.

 

When I found these three baskets, I knew that I would be using them as part of this makeover.  Not only do we store linens in this closet, but it is also used to store our medicine, and I purchased two sets of plastic drawers that I knew would be great to store our medication.  The drawers on the top shelf are mostly empty, which makes me very happy because I have some extra space, and I’m sure I will fill it up eventually.  The only drawer that holds anything is the bottom one, and it holds wraps and a wrist brace. The white basket on the top shelf is for first aid items, and I also purged these and reorganized them.  We have a small waxing pot that is kept in this closet, and there are two plastic boxes right behind it that are totally empty, so more free storage space that can be used for something in the future.

I wish you could have seen the state of our medications before this.  I had them in a large fabric bin that was falling apart, and it was really difficult to access what we needed.  It didn’t really fit the space I was keeping it in, and we had to take it out of the closet every time we needed to look for the Advil, or whatever it was we needed.  And that is why it was falling apart.  I started by throwing that bin away, and going through all of our medication and throwing away things that were expired.  I used the white plastic drawer and a black plastic drawer that I already had to organize all of the medication we were keeping into categories.  There is a category for children’s medication, pain relievers, cold and sinus medication, nasal spray, and a drawer for miscellaneous that really didn’t fit into a category of their own.

I placed a cork placemat on top of the white drawers to make a small shelf on top that is holding the black drawer, a small bowl that contains safety pins, and some lint rollers.  I also have our cold and sinus medication in a basket on the shelf above, because we have large bottles of things like Nyquil that would not fit into the drawers.  It is very easy to pull off of the shelf, so no worries about it falling apart from wear and tear.  These drawers have been a complete game changer for how we access our medication!  As you can see I used labels to label each different category, so now the whole family knows where to find everything.  And with three children, that is always a good thing!  The basket right next to the white drawers holds cleaning rags, and the largest basket on the shelf above holds makeup bags that belong to my daughter.

I wanted to make this linen closet over on a very tight budget, and that meant that the wire shelving had to stay.  I decided to buy a pretty ribbon and disguise it a little.  I love this burlap ribbon with rose gold glitter!  I simply cut strips of it to fit the length of the closet and hot glued it onto the front of the shelves. We store our sheets and pillowcases in this closet and also cleaning rags and towels.  I got rid of a few sets of sheets, and the sheets that belong on each of our children’s  beds were moved to their own closets in their bedrooms.  I learned a little trick on Pinterest for storing sheets and pillow cases, and I neatly folded all of the sheets, and placed them and one pillow case into the other pillow case.  Now it is easy to just grab the entire set off of the shelf.  I have two sets of sheets that I use in the summer and two sets of flannel sheets that we use in the winter.  I also have some sets of extra pillow cases that don’t have sheets with them.  I purged through a bunch of them, and kept just a small stack of them.  I also kept a couple of flat sheets that we don’t use on our beds, but we do sometimes use them as picnic or beach blankets.

I didn’t realize that I had become a lightbulb hoarder.  Almost the entire floor of this linen closet contains light bulbs!  And believe it or not, I got rid of a bunch.  I only kept the ones that I know will eventually be used, and I bought two of these cute boxes, one in brown and one white with gold trim, and they contain light bulbs.  And then there is a basket that we already were using in this closet next to it that contains bulbs that would not fit into the boxes.  To the right of the boxes is extra tissues and toilet paper.  This is a central place to store these items because this closet is right outside of our kids bathroom and our bedroom.

 

The biggest change to this linen closet is this adjustable door rack that I purchased.  It is my favorite part of this space.  It gave us so much more storage, I don’t know why I didn’t buy one of these years ago!  We were even able to move our bathroom cleaning products out of the cabinet in the bathroom and relocate them to this rack.  That freed up some much needed storage space in our bathroom for my daughter to keep some of her things.  We also were storing travel and makeup bags in the bathroom, and were able to move them to the closet as well.

Adjustable Door Rack

These are the cleaning products that were relocated from the bathroom.  And they are still in very close vicinity to the bathroom so it is not a problem at all.

There are some other odds and ends, like dog grooming items, bug spray, and alcohol that are now kept here.

These are the travel bags that we relocated from the bathroom, and it is so much easier to access them now.  The medications you see here all belong to my husband.  These are supplements that he takes on a daily basis.  They used to be housed in our pantry, but when I reorganized and decluttered it for this challenge a couple of weeks ago, I decided to move them here, and he seems to be perfectly happy with the change.  Of course, I discussed this with him before I moved them and got his approval.

I am so satisfied with this makeover.  I guess you can say when it comes to this challenge, I feel like I saved the best for last because this linen closet was the worst and most chaotic and unorganized spot in our home.  So I am so happy to call this project done!  My only regret is that I didn’t get to show you the before photos.  And one more thing before you go, just in case you are wondering what is on top of the drawers on the top shelf, that is a heating pad and a gel pad that can be used warm and cold.

I hope that this mini makeover of our linen closet inspired you today to tackle a closet in your home that might need it, and that is showed you just how much you really can fit into a tight space if that is all you have to work with.  Have a fantastic weekend!  I am planning to get started on another bathroom makeover, and I am so excited to tell you all about it very soon!

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