Linen Closet

Everyone, including me, has those areas in their homes.  Those, areas that are...an embarrassing hot mess.  For me, I have a few of those (shhhhh.), but today we're going to focus on just one (the others will come in due time), my linen closet.  Thank goodness this is a closet that has a door so I can keep it nice and hidden...so hidden that I didn't deal with it.  Well!  The time to ignore it is over.  Let me show you this hot mess I speak of:

Ew.  I absolutely hated searching for anything in there...I also hated putting towels and sheets away...it was more cramming them into an open spot rather than putting it away nicely.  What I really wanted was to paint the entire closet white - more to freshen up than to change color, and I really REALLY wanted two additional shelves.  Thanks to my AMAZING Hubby, my wish was granted!!!

THE BEFORE

THE AFTER!!!

Isn't it beautiful!?!?!  From 3 to 5 shelves PLUS room on the floor...it's my dream come true.  I was beyond giddy to get to work on this...but, I had to wait a day or so for the paint to dry.  Of course, things will get messier before it starts to look better...

This is my mess of going through the drawers, throwing items away, putting like things together, creating categories, and busting out my organizing bins!  And after only about 2 hours (keep in mind that I was doing this with two Littles "helping" me so it probably would've taken less time if they weren't so helpful - love them though!), this is what the final product is:

Aaaah, it's like a breath of fresh air!!!  Allow me to give you the tour:

• Top shelf is dedicated to the kids' hooded towels, beach towels and old towels (we mostly use these when the kids have the stomach bug.  We cover their bed in them, that way if they throw up on the bed, all we have to do is remove the layer of towels and put them in the washer).
• Next shelf is towels and hand towels.
• And the third shelf down is bedding as well as an extra set of bathroom floor mats.  We insist on having an extra set so that when one is being washed and air dried (because that takes over night) then we pull out the spare so the kids don't slip after bath.
  
  
  
  

• My FAVORITE part is the handled baskets that I filled with all sorts of stuff!!!  There are two shelves of items.  Some categories are:  mouth hygiene (toothpaste, brushes, floss, little kid flossers), bar soaps, children's meds (we try to have extra Tylenol and Motrin on hand, Vicks vapor rub and strips that go into a vaporizer), adult meds (an array of cold meds, Tylenol, Ibuprofen), travel stuff, pitty nay-ohs (pretty nails aka nail polish - Sweet Pickles way of saying nail polish), deodorant/perfume/cologne.
• On the bottom is where we keep a couple extra comforters and an extra pillow.
• I just left the kids baby soap on the shelf since it was so large.
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  And what kind of organizer would I be if I didn't label each handle!?!?!  Although I must admit that after the first 4 baskets I ran out of black on clear label tape.  I grabbed my spare only to find out it was black on WHITE tape!!!  Yes, this pretty much ruined my day, but thank goodness for Amazon!  I'm expecting my tape refills to arrive tomorrow (whew!).

Now, while I love LOVE lurv to use bins, baskets, buckets, etc for my organizing purposes, I will be the first to admit that it's not always practical.  What I mean is, these type of organizing items take up more room on a shelf than just placing the actual item on the shelf.  That being said, I opted to not put the towels in a basket for that exact reason.  I tried this before with laundry baskets but I never felt like I was getting my space worth by using these.  Looks cleaner but the baskets were busting at the seams.  I DID opt to use the handled baskets for the toiletries.  Those are smaller items and putting all the items on the shelf would have been more of a mess than organized.  Long story short, there is a time and a place for organizational items.

We already had white paint that we used for the shelves and interior of the closet.  We also already had the wood to make the shelves that were installed.  The cost was the handled baskets that I purchased at The Container Store (Walmart has ones very similar to these, they run $2.97 each).  I have two different sizes in here:  8 small (they were $3.99 each =  $31.92) and  large ($4.99 each = $14.97) bringing us to a grand total of $46.89  While I'm not proud of that price, it's the price I paid to have my sanity restored in my linen closet.  A price that I was willing to pay (she says in a hushed voice and with conviction).

Hope you all enjoyed my linen closet make-over!  Thanks to Hubby, and my Littles, it was a HUGE success!!!!

*Side note...there's a rogue bullet - did you find it!?!?!*