Organizing My Utility & Linen Closets

I thought I’d show you all my utility and linen closets that I re-organized. I have lots of painting to do but it’s been too cold to have the windows open (even with using low VOC paint). So I’ve been organizing and decluttering since I don’t want to move with junk!
This is the utility closet door before. I really liked my shoe organizer. It was a great way to keep things organized and I could easily see what I had. It was also a handy place to stuff plastic bags. I do have re-usable shopping bags but often forget to bring them into the store – therefore the plastic bags!
So now I have a couple of aprons and a cute plastic bag holder  from etsy on the door because my husband always hated that shoe organizer AND I don’t want to give the impression that there’s not enough storage in this house. People do look in closets when shopping for a home!

This closet was also pumpkin orange! Actually I don’t have one white closet. ALL my closets are painted a color on the inside. The inside of the door was yellow as you can see in the photo at the very top. 

Now the inside is very light blue (sigh…because when I tested this color on a bedroom wall it was practically white but without any natural light you can see the blue – but it’s less noticeable than bright pumpkin orange). The inside of the door was painted white.
The vacuum cleaner hose holder is from IKEA. I have a few photos of some organizing things from IKEA at the end of the post (long post – this is what happens when you only post once in a while).

I have plenty of room on the shelves!

Now for my hall linen closet!

As you can see it’s not all that big! Anyway it was a mess. Below is the after!

Here’s the heartless truth. If this is all the space you have than this is what you have to work with. The only way to have it organized is to get rid of stuff you don’t use/really need. (I do have a couple of towels in the dyer but as you can see, there’s plenty of room for them.)

Things I got rid of – Christmas and Easter towels. Yes, at one time in my life I used to change my entire hall bathroom at Christmas and Easter. I had holiday shower curtains, towels, bath accessories  - you name it  I had it. It was fun when my daughter was little. I also still had a stack of the little facecloths I used for her when she was a baby! She’ll be 19 this month. Time to let go of those baby cloths I think. I got rid of ratty towels (donated them to my vet and cut some up to use as rags). I do a load of laundry every other day – I don’t need to keep a whole lot of sheets and towels. I got rid of (donated) tablecloths that don’t even fit the table I have now (why was I keeping those?).

I put the washcloths in a container (also from IKEA) and the hand towels next to it. As you can see this closet is still pumpkin orange! The wallpaper on the shelves is the one I had in my kitchen in my first house in Georgia. I papered those shelves 11 years ago!

Do you see that I have an entire empty shelf now that I got rid of stuff!!! I keep my daughter’s sheets in her room’s closet but I may move them out here. Also, I only have one set of guest room sheets and they’re of course on the bed. I do have some extra pillow cases for that room and I keep those in a container in that room.

Well that’s two closets done – four more to go!

For some reason I wind up in IKEA every January! Here are a few photos of some of their organizing systems.









I'm motivated to declutter and organize since we're selling our house but I must say it also just feels freeing to have less stuff!

Thanks for taking the time to drop by and have a wonderful weekend!