We’re empty nesters and have been working on cleaning things out, re-organizing our items, and downsizing everything that we can. Now that we’re both older, we’re looking to make our lives easier. Less clutter means less deep cleaning.
The first project that I tackled was cleaning out and reorganizing our two linen closets. Since we live in an older home, both are small in size. I decided to take everything out of BOTH closets and give it a good cleaning. I wiped down the shelves, walls, and door. The one shelf was a little lose so I tightened that up too.
One decision I made was to put all of our linens in one closet, the larger of the two. Then to put all of our extra items like beauty & skincare products, personal care items, ice packs, heating pads, extra throw blankets, outdoor linens, etc. into the smaller closet.
My husband isn’t the best at keeping things organized so I opted to label the shelves with what goes on each one. I’m hoping that when he’s putting things away that he’ll place it on the correct shelf. This will hopefully save me from having to organize things (again) anytime soon. At least that’s the plan.
When it came to downsizing things…I ONLY kept 6 sets of bed sheets, enough bath linens to last the two of us for a week, my extra set of bath rugs, etc. I was determined to let things go! I bagged up everything that I no longer needed and donated them to my daughter. Her family just bought a camper, so our old linens will come in handy for that.
Going through everything I noticed that we had WAY TOO MANY linens for just two people. I kept just enough for us to use on a weekly basis with a handful of extras for when we have guests. I inspected everything for rips, tears, and stains. Anything that was damaged or was beginning to look ragged…got removed.
I’m not the best “folder” in the world and wasn’t going to waste a lot of time getting things expertly folded. Sorry, got other things to do. With that said, I got things put back into the linen closets and I love how organized & clean that it looks. With the labels on the shelves we both can easily find what we’re looking for!
Every 3-4 weeks I’m going to tackle a new projects and will share on the blog what I’ve done. Hopefully it will motivate some of our blog readers to get busy cleaning things up, orgaizing their items and downsizing when appropriate. I think we all keep way too many things that we no longer need.
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It is always nice to get rid of extra stuff. I still need to do this with my lnens which are not all in the linen closet.
I have too many towels. I live alone so I don’t need very many. I also have too many sheets so I can get rid of some.
I don’t have that many linens myself. However I do need to organize our closets. I do understand the linen folding. I am awful at it lol!
I need to do that too. I have stuff scattered between my two linen closets also. I will do it as you do. The one thing I do differently is I put sets of bed linens together. I fold out the flat sheet and put the matching fitted sheet and the pillow cases on the pile. Then I wrap the flat sheet around them. It is a sandwich and when I change a bed, I have it all together.
YEA it is so freeing to get rid of all that extra stuff. I am not a major Martha Stewart fan but I do have one of her tricks I use all the time. I take a matching set fold not well and place ever thing in one of the pillow cases. This way it is all together and I can just pull the set out.
when I moved I got rid of so much stuff. Some of it I didn’t remember having