Is your linen closet seriously lacking in space? Here are the tricks that I used to organize my small linen closet that I know will help you organize yours! To give you an idea of how small my closet is, it only has four shelves that are 23 inches wide. The smallest shelf is 15 inches tall and the biggest is 20 inches tall!
In order to organize your linen closet you will see that we will follow many of the steps outlined in my post 5 Steps for Optimizing Storage in Small Spaces.
Purge the Space
The first step to organizing a linen closet is to purge it. Before beginning to do this, set up a spot near your closet so that you can organize your closet’s contents into the following categories: keep, trash, charity, sell, repair, relocate, or re-home. You will notice these are the same categories I consistently use when organizing an area in my home. To recap for you.
Purging Categories
Keep: This pile is for anything that you are keeping that will go back into the space you are organizing.
Trash is for any linens that are torn, stained or otherwise unusable. These items should not be given to charity.
Charity is for anything that is in good, but not perfect condition that another person or animal could benefit from. These are items that would not benefit a friend or family member and are not valuable enough to sell. A great place to give used linens or towels to is your local animal shelter. Always check with them first to see what they are accepting.
Sell is for any item that you believe would make you a decent amount of money if you sell it online, in a garage sale or in a consignment sale. For example, we switched my daughter from a twin bed to a full size bed. We had Pottery Barn sheets for her twin bed that we would not use with her brother. We sold them on Ebay for a small profit.
Repair is for items that will have to be fixed by taping, gluing, sewing, etc.
Relocate is for items that need to be moved to a more appropriate space in your house.
Re-home is for any item that you want to give away to a family or friend that you believe would benefit them. Do not use this as an opportunity to pawn items off on friends and family that you don’t want, because you feel guilting donating them to charity. If it will not make your family or friend’s life better, they don’t need it.
Utilize Vertical Space
There is nothing worse than trying to pull out a set of sheets or a towel from the bottom of a large stack. As I said before it is like playing Jenga. You are holding your breath while you pull hoping the rest of the stack does not fall down. Anyone who does laundry knows that having to refold spilled sheets or towels is an awful chore. Although my vertical space on each level of my cabinet is small, there is still enough room for me to fit a stackable shelf in.
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I recommend using stackable shelves, or expandable shelves if your closet is wider. These shelves are inexpensive and allow me to keep from creating large stacks of linens that topple over. You can see that I can easily fit king sized sheets and rolled towels underneath the shelves. I still have plenty of space above them to fit more linens in.
I have 4 sections in my linen closet. So I purchased shelves for 3 of the 4 sections. I opted not to use one on the bottom of my closet where I store thick blankets. All total I spent less than $20 on this project.
Put it Back Together
Now that you have purged and utilized vertical space it is time to put items back. I recommend putting like items together. I keep my sheets in one section and for the most part I only have 2 sets of sheets per bed. One set that is on the bed and the other that is in the closet. Towels are the item I have the most of so I gave them two shelves. On the first shelf above the rolled towels I placed hand towels and washcloths. I recommend folding them all the same way and stacking like colors together. On the second shelf I have some rolled and some stacked towels. I chose to roll or stack towels based on the space available. Each linen closet is unique so treat it like a puzzle and play around with it until you fit each piece in the right spot. At the bottom of my linen cabinet I keep extra blankets and heating pads.
Here is what the finished product looks like! Don’t you just love an organized space?
All total I can fit about 6 extra blankets, 1 heating pad, 12 bath towels, 6 beach towels, 20 hand towels, 10 wash cloths and about 6-8 sets of sheets in my linen closet comfortably. I hope this helps you organize your small linen closet or even a big one! Do you have any great linen closet hacks you would like to share?
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