A linen closet is a common place for disorganization to occur. Towels are folded every which way and shoved in between mismatched bed sheets, socks mysteriously end up inside a pillowcase, an avalanche occurs when you pull out a beach towel… Sound familiar? Having an organized linen closet can help you save time when you’re scrambling to change your child’s bed in the middle of the night (from those all too familiar accidents) or when you just need to grab an extra towel for a guest and you don’t want to hand them the towel you use to bathe the dog. Here are a few tricks to help you have an organized linen closet.

Ever heard of Martha Stewart? Queen of clean and organized? When it comes to folding those darned fitted sheets, Martha has suggested an easy way to make folding less of a chore. Note that this technique takes practice, so don’t be discouraged if you’re having trouble the first few times you try it. Watch this video on how to fold a fitted sheet.

Matchy-Matchy
Time to play the matching game. Match up your fitted and flat sheets with their pillowcases and check to see if you have any sheets missing their mate. We suggest having two sets of sheets per bed for spring/summer and two sets of sheets for fall/winter; so that you have one in use and one back up in the linen closet at all times. When corralling your sets, stack the matching sets in piles, take the pillowcase for each set and tuck the entire sheet set inside of it to keep all the pieces in one place. See how here.

How To Fold Towels
Creating a department store look with your towels can make them easily accessible and look great too! Once your towels are folded, we suggest organizing them by size (body towel, hand towel, face towel, etc) or by matching set. Here’s a quick video on how to fold towels.

Label Time
Make sure everything has its place and stays in place. Take some time to create pretty labels whether your sheets are in baskets, bins or sitting on shelves. This will help you maintain your space and you can rest assured that your linens will be returning to the correct place every time.

Keep ’em Fresh
Keep things fresh with homemade sachets in your linen closet. Adding a luscious lavender scent to your linens can also provide a calming effect when you’re dozing off on your freshly cleaned sheets. See how to make them here.

Doggie Donations
Now that you’ve done the linen purge, you might be wondering what to do with your old towels, blankets, sheets, etc that have stains, rips or are just ragged. Aside from creating cleaning rags out of them (because how many of those do you really need?), another great alternative is to donate them to your local animal shelter where they will reuse them in many different ways, including using them as stuffing for animal beds.

Organizing your linen closet can help you manage your household and keep your cool when you have surprise guests. Creating a system that works for you helps avoid the linen closet avalanche and will turn you into a bed making machine. Doesn’t that sound nice?