As a design editor (and a Type-A person), I consider myself pretty organized. I feel at peace when everything is in its place at home. But every home has its skeletons, and for me, it’s my linen closet. It’s my job to test bedding, bath towels, and all kinds of sleep essentials, which means that my closet is almost always overflowing. It’s perpetually pre-avalanche when I open it, so I decided to consult the experts on how to tackle this mess: professional organizers.
It’s their job to look at your home and find the method in the madness. While each client has different needs, there are a few common experiences across the dozens of closets they encounter. Excess or outdated items often take up valuable real estate, so they focus on helping clients either get rid of them or re-home them.
“If it is incomplete, not in good condition, or not being actively used, it should not be in the linen closet,” Adriana Delgado, CEO of Oceanside Cleaning Service, says. Ready to get a head start on decluttering? Below, you’ll find five of the things you need to ditch ASAP for a linen closet that makes more sense.Jump to:
- Damaged, Worn-Out Linens
- Incomplete and Outsized Bedding
- Excess Towels
- Misplaced Items
- Hand-Me-Downs and Relics
- Organizing What’s Left
Damaged, Worn-Out Linens
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Plenty of the linens in your closet are in great shape, but everyone has a set or two that have seen better days. If they’re stained, ripped, or otherwise damaged beyond repair, it’s time to say goodbye.
“Toss them if you don’t like how you feel when you’re in them (hot, cold, uncomfortable),” Meghan Cocchiaro, founder of Organized by Meg, says. “Sleep is too precious to be sleeping on bad sheets.” That doesn’t mean they have to go to waste, though. Shara Kay, owner of SK Organizing, often donates rough old towels that are unpleasant to use to animal shelters, where the material can hold up against active paws.
“Towels that are thin, frayed, losing their loops, or have stains that will not come out during washing and therefore cannot be reused should be discarded,” Delgado says. “Clients tend to retain these towels simply due to habit or intend to reuse them as cleaning rags, yet rarely do.”
Incomplete and Outsized Bedding
When professional organizers are sorting through a client’s linen closet, they often find bedding that’s outsized for the home. It’s either too small or too big for the beds that are actually present. So that set of full-size sheets you loved before upgrading to a Queen? Get rid of it. The same goes for king-sized pillowcases when you only have standard pillows. As you’re going through piles of bedding, remember to check for complete sets.
“In virtually every linen closet I enter, I find at least some mismatched sheet sets with missing components,” Delgado says. “Fitted sheets without flat sheets, pillow cases without the matching sheet set, duvet covers without a duvet; these single pieces consume available shelf space while creating visual disarray, although they serve no functional purpose.”
In fact, chances are you own more bedding sets than you need, even if they DO fit. The pros operate on a pretty strict quota: two sheet sets per bed. “That allows you to have one on your bed and one in waiting at all times,” Barb Mickits, founder of Edit & Organize Charlotte, says. “You don’t need more than that.” The only exception to that rule is if you have a specific winter set that’s heavier, like holiday sheets you put on come Christmastime.
Excess Towels
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The number of towels you need depends on your lifestyle. Mickits checks with each family before making a recommendation. Households with a pool, young kids, or frequent overnight guests might need more towels than others. But if you don’t have extenuating circumstances, it’s best to pare back.
“In the vast majority of households, there are significantly more towels than would be used,” Delgado says. “With a couple, you don’t need twelve bath towels. For each member of the household (plus one or two for guest towels), I recommend having two to three towels. Any additional towel is just taking up shelf space and is going to make the closet harder to use.”
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If you really want to keep some old linens, Delgado recommends keeping two to three as designated cleaning rags and recycling the rest.
Misplaced Items
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It’s easy for linen closets to hold more than their namesake. Mickits sees them become a catch-all space very often. “These other items, such as cleaning products and first aid supplies, can start to take over and make the space messy if they’re not intentionally put in the closet,” Mickits says. If you absolutely need to store these items to make the most of your space, use a few simple baskets to wrangle them.
Cocchiaro often comes across several items that need to be tossed or re-homed. Tools and hardware belong in the utility closet or garage, for example. So if you find any of the below in your linen closet, Cocchiaro suggests giving them a new home:
- Extra parts, pieces, and screws
- Bathroom fixtures, like towel rods
- Broken hooks and old shower heads
- Miscellaneous batteries
- Expired medication and makeup
- Hotel shampoo bottles
- Sunscreen and lotion with a drop left
- Bath toys for kids who are in their teens
- Broken hairdryers and old styling tools
Hand-Me-Downs and Relics
Don’t feel guilty for holding on to things because of sentimental value, especially if it was a gift. If you have hand-me-down bedding that’s no longer in use (or that your kids have outgrown), it doesn’t need to take up space in a high-traffic area. Kay recommends keeping just one pillowcase, or taking a picture to remember it by. As for those backup mattress protectors, if you don’t have young kids or pets climbing into bed, you can toss those.
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“If you are choosing not to use a quilt or blanket on a bed, as a throw at the foot of the bed, on a chair or otherwise displayed, then it shouldn’t be stored in the prime real estate area of a linen closet,” Cocchiaro says. Store it where other memories are held in the home, and you can retrieve it when it’s time to pass it down or admire it.
Organizing What’s Left
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Once you’ve tossed or re-homed everything that doesn’t belong in the linen closet, it’s time to organize what remains. This is super customizable, but focus on how you use each item (and how often you’ll need to reach it).
If you use it daily or weekly: keep it at eye level. This is for your bath towels and bed sheets currently in use.
Less frequently used: upper shelves. Guest bedding, extra blankets, and lightweight product refills belong here.
Rarely used, but heavy: lower shelves. Large bottles of laundry detergent and soap refills, for example. In homes with young children, store this as low as you can while keeping it out of reach for little hands.