Organizing A Chaotic Linen Closet

Linen closets are often very cluttered. We get new towels and sheets but don’t get rid of the old ones. We stuff pillows and blankets on the shelves until there’s an avalanche when we open the door. And we store things in linen closets that don’t really have any other “home”, but without regular maintenance, these items can add to the clutter.

In this post I’ll share tips for organizing your linen closet, while sharing pictures of when I decluttered and organized my linen closet several years ago (it’s still pretty similar now, which shows that organizing works!).

First, here’s a picture of what I started with.

This closet is narrow and deep, and with so much stuff in it, it was hard to access things at the back without toppling things over. We don’t actually have a lot of linens and we don’t store many of the ones we do have in our linen closet. Sheets are stored in each bedroom and we tend to use most of our towels right out of the laundry so we just store a few extras in this linen closet.

So, while our upstairs hall closet was designed to be a linen closet, it really functions as a storage area for a lot of other things, especially extra toiletries. And our bathroom doesn’t have a lot of storage so I wanted to free up space in this closet to move some things from our bathroom.

Today I’m going to show you the before and afters of the shelves with linens and share some organizing tips I incorporated.  Then in my next post I’ll show you the before and after pictures of the toiletries shelves and a total reveal.  

Here are a few close-ups of what the linen shelves were like before I organized them.

The top shelf had a bunch of linens that we don’t use often.  There were some extra sheets and blankets.  Several of them used to be mine when I was growing up or when I lived on my own before I was married.

I’d also been storing some new towels that we received as gifts. I knew we would be moving soon so I kept them for staging so we would have something nice to put out when our house was on the market.

Next was the towels shelf.

At one point, this shelf was much neater.  But over time, clean towels just got added to the top of the pile and it began to topple because the sizes end up being stacked sort of randomly.  I can’t really complain because I’m happy that my family puts away laundry, but I knew there was a better way.

This shelf also housed our travel cosmetic bag.  There were more towels hiding behind it too.  And we stored extra tissue boxes here.  There was only one at the time I took these pictures, but there were often 6-8 boxes piled up here.

Linen Closet Organizing Tip #1

Take everything out of the closet and group like items together

With many of my clients, their linen closets may have been organized at one point, but over the years, things are put wherever there’s space and it’s hard to tell how many things they have in each category. They often have lots of old sheets and towels buried under the ones they currently use. When we pull everything out, they can see everything and we can group together piles of sheets, pillowcases, blankets, pillows, towels, washcloths, etc.

In my case, I had piles of blankets, new towels, currently used towels, washcloths, toiletries, and storage items. I relocated a few items that really belonged somewhere else in our home.

Linen Closet Organizing Tip #2

Declutter anything you no longer need, use, love or have space for.

With my clients, when we pull everything out of their linen closet and group things in piles, we often uncover linens they haven’t used or needed in years. When everything is grouped, it makes it easier to declutter down to an amount in each category that makes sense for their space and their current needs.

For my closet, I decluttered things I no longer needed or loved. I donated several blankets and sheets that hadn’t been used in a long time. I’d been holding onto them, thinking I might use them someday, but realistically I knew we didn’t need them.

Linen Closet Organizing Tip #3

Look for baskets or bins to contain some categories.

Not everyone needs to do this, but if you hate the messy look of fitted sheets or piles of unevenly sized/folded towels, storing them in some sort of container can really help keep your closet tidy and organized.

I had some pretty brown baskets that I bought previously but I didn’t end up using them where I had planned to. I was so happy to find out they fit side-by-side in this closet. I also had some small plastic baskets from the dollar store that I hadn’t used yet. And I bought a secret weapon that you’ll see in the next post.

So here’s how the linen shelves turned out!

There’s a lot less on this top shelf than before.  The basket has 2 blankets I wanted to keep (one is an electric blanket that we use every once in awhile and the other is for our futon when we have guests). The clear blanket bag has those new towels that I wanted to keep for staging.

I wish I had one more of these baskets but they came in a set of 3.  

Here’s the next shelf:

I love it!  Those baskets hide all the chaos.

By rolling the hand towels and wash clothes and storing them vertically like this, it’s easy to find what we need, or put clean towels back, without having to deal with that messy pile we had before.  I kept the large towels stacked, but we only have a couple of them so it’s not nearly as bad as before.

Here’s a peek inside the other basket.

These were actually items that were on a lower shelf, but since I decluttered so many linens, there was room to move these items up here. I grouped items that only I used into a bin and labeled it “Mom”. I’ll show you more of how I organized the toiletries in the next post. But let me just say right now, it’s nice to have these things hidden.

One more look at the top shelf:

And the 2nd shelf:

So much better! And even if the things in the bins don’t stay as perfectly folded as they are now (they never do!) the baskets hide the mess and make it easy to find things.

If you actually store more linens in your linen closet, you may want bins for each different category: bath towels, hand towels, washcloths, fitted sheets, top sheets, pillow cases, blankets, etc. You may prefer to separate bed linens by size of bed (king, queen, twin, etc.). Or by person. Whatever makes most sense for your family.

For more tips, check out the linen closets post from my 31 Days of Organizing Tips series. And stay tuned to the next post for more tips on organizing a chaotic linen closet!

How do you store your linens?  How many sheets and blankets do you have?

If you need help decluttering or organizing, contact me for in-person services in the Mississauga area, or virtual services anywhere else.

Happy organizing!