Closet Clean-up

When Traci from Beneath My Heart and her sister, Cyndi, from CyndiSpivey.com/Walking in His Grace decided to collaborate on a January project, I knew I was all in. I met these beautiful ladies at Relevant, and I'm so thankful I got to know them a little bit. I wish it had been more.

They decided they wanted to do a series on organizing...Traci would take the home organization part; Cyndi would take the heart organization. I loved the idea.

This week's Heart post by Cyndi is "Three Tips to Organize Your Quiet Time with God." It's a great post, whether you have never had a quiet time or if you've been having one for years.

"Having a consistent Quiet Time can make a difference in how we handle this journey we’re on."

How true.

For my post, I'm linking up to Traci's half. Her challenge for organizing our homes this week was a closet. Any closet. Linen, bedroom, coat, whatever. I wanted to do my bedroom closet, but that would take so much more energy than I have I decided to do the next one that came to mind: the linen closet. I must give a disclosure here. My linen closet (and my linens, for that matter) is nothing fancy. By far. But it's what I have, and it needs to be neat, so I got to work on it.

Here's the before:

Full closet view
ShelvesFloor

One word. Yuck. We had been shoving stuff in there for who knows how long, never taking the time to really find the correct spot for it. The floor was so full when we'd put a new thing of TP in there we'd just set it down and squeeze the door shut, hoping it would latch. Pitiful.

After doing like Traci did and designating three piles (throw away, sell/give away, keep), it now looks like this:

Top two shelves...I actually was able to completely clean out the left half of the top shelf and put our extra pillows up there (the blue one is a body pillow folded over. And yes, those are hardhats. See, Sound Man has worked in the safety industry for 15 years, and, well, he had access to them, and when a tornado threatens...well, I'd just rather be safe - albeit silly looking- than sorry. I have a GREAT story about Sound Man and the hard hat in a hail storm...for another time). The second shelf is just better organized, plus cleaned out of expired stuff. I used a basket I found on the bottom for corralling sunscreen and extra shampoos and other stuff that tends to get knocked down.

Bottom two shelves. Okay, this looks really pitiful and it looks like we don't have any real towels to our name. But we really do. If you come visit, I promise you will have a towel to dry off with. Currently, our three big, huge towels are in use, hanging on the back of the bathroom door. We have a couple more preventing drafts from sneaking in under drafty doors. Anyway, the point is, this used to be a hodgepodge of towels, hand towels, and bed linens, none of which I knew went with what bed. Now, the towels and other bath linens are on one shelf, and the sheets are on the bottom shelf. I put them in bags I got from Dollar Tree to keep the dust off of them. Even if they are clean, if they're not put up like this, I think they smell like dust and I won't use them. I'm weird.

And the floor. Oh, I can SEE the floor! How nice! Or...well, aside from the '80's carpet, it's nice. And yes, that is a Boppy pillow. Which I will keep forever since not only does it have precious memories attached to it, but it's very useful for my tailbone when I'm in the floor brushing one of the pooches. I fell 15 years ago and bruised my tailbone and it STILL gives me fits. Anyway, I'm so happy to see this. You would not BELIEVE the junk I threw away from down here. It filled a huge bag up!

Ahhhhh...it's so nice to be able to look in there and actually SEE what's there. Especially the floor. And even though it still needs to be painted and the contact paper needs to be changed and the carpet is from the '80's...at least it's clean. So, that makes me happy.

Please click over to see other closet makeovers, some of which will make your jaw drop! Traci's own closet makeover is one of them!