Linen Closet Makeover...

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend, I know I did. This past week I went on a home-purging spree. I felt like we owned too much stuff and it was making it hard to keep the house clean & clutter free. And add to that the fact that we registered for a ton of new stuff for our wedding.

If we didn't do something about it now, our tiny little hell hole apartment would look like a scene out of Hoarders once we brought back any wedding gifts this fall. So it was time to start throwing crap away.  I decided to start with our clothes (I didn't get pic of this, sorry) and pack up anything that didn't fit.  This filled up two large TJ Maxx shopping bags, just from my side of the closet.  I took it all to Clothes Mentor and sold it, they paid me over $100 for the items they accepted, the rest went into the garage sale box.

The next area to tackle was our small linen closet in our "hallway".  It had become a catch all for anything and everything that didn't fit in our home.  And it doesn't actually hold any linens, go figure.  So here are the before & afters:

 

As you can see, its a skinny little closet with 5 shelves & ample floor space, and I did my best to fill them all.  Now we're down to just using 2 shelves & the floor!

 

 

 Here are the top 2 shelves.  The top shelf used to hold christmas decor & gifts we pick up throughout the year, shopping bags & any misc. items that didn't fit on other shelves or weren't needed on a regular basis.  Now we have moved all of the games up to that shelf and they are stacked to the ceiling!  But considering they used to be spread out amongst 3 different shelves, this is a much better solution.  The 2nd shelf used to house what we used most frequently.  It contained all of our meds & extra toiletries as well as all of our puppy supplies.  Now it is EMPTY!

 

Shelves 3, 4 & 5 mostly held games before and a random assortment of junk.  Now we have emptied out 3 & 4 and have our essentials on shelf 5 (sorry its kind of hard to see it at the bottom).  I separated everything out into 3 baskets.  The left one has extra razors, toothpaste & brushes, combs & contact cases.  The middle contains any extra products such as shave cream, shampoo & hair stuff.  The right one has our meds.

 

 

And finally, the floor.  It used to be a catch all for odd shaped items that didn't have homes.  Now it is streamlined with 2 matching baskets, one for puppy supplies & the other for computer & other electronic parts.  The large contraption in the middle of the before picture was a liquor bottle dispenser from my college days, it is now in the garage sale box.

It's still not complete, as I'm sure once other areas of the apartment get purged & organized I will move things into the empty shelves.  Maybe I'll try a novel concept and actually store our linens in there instead of the laundry room! 

I'm linking up with House of Grace and her series "Organize Your Life - Simplifying your Life One Week at a Time"