Linen Closet - Before and After!

Today I started on my closet goal! I'm so proud. My mom said she wanted me to start with the linen closet, which disappointed me because I thought it was the one that needed the least work. But ohoho was I wrong. Man.

Since we have such little space around here, the linen closet hosted not only linens but a lot of random toiletries like TP, tissues, little paper cups, bars of soap, uhh girly things (we ARE girls after all), and laundry supplies. I found no less than 9 boxes of Kleenex, to give you an idea of what went on in that disaster of a closet! So I spent a good amount of time rooting through all the duplicates of things we had in the closet and reorganizing/folding our towels and bedding.

I realized that one big problem we have as pack rats is that all the mess gets so hidden by the rest of the new messes that are constantly piling up, that we often profess things we can't find as lost forever and just buy new ones. The Kleenex for instance. So think of it this way, if you're facing a massive decluttering and just can't get yourself started: you may save money! Tip: Organize your supplies, whatever they may be, in a way that helps you see all of them all the time. That way, there's never any confusion about what you have enough of.

All in all, I'm still sure we have way too many freaking towels (most of them pink - why??), and in retrospect I didn't follow my own advice about stuff's visibility, but here are the before and afters anyway! Since this is an ongoing project, I'll probably redo everything later; this is just the first step. Also, keep in mind that I did this one on my own! So it's not neat as a pin, per se. The before pictures are inaccurate, because I forgot to take them before I started! They were taken about halfway through, when I had thrown a bunch of crap out into the hallway.

Click each photo to view a much bigger version.

Before:


After:





As you can tell, I ended up a little pressed for space in the end. My Space Bags have holes in them. :( So I couldn't vacuum the linens up to save space like my mom suggested. Hopefully the comforters crammed at the top of this closet can go somewhere else once we, uh, have space somewhere else.