Monday, October 12, 2015

I finally have a linen closet!

When I bought my house, there were a couple of storage issues that I knew I would have to contend with in order to feel like I could stay at least mostly organized. 

First of all, there was no coat closet.  Who builds a house without a coat closet in a climate where people legitimately wear outerwear at least 6 months of the year?  The corollary to this statement is that there was also no good place to put a vacuum.  Thankfully, this was something my contractors were able to rectify by taking a few square feet out of the downstairs bedroom and adding a door in the hall. 

The second storage issue was the linen closet.  Again, who builds a house without a linen closet, particularly when the only full bath is too small to accommodate any additional free-standing furniture?  Clearly the 1950s were a simpler time.  People mustn't have had extra towels!  It was much trickier to rob space from a bedroom for this issue without making it challenging to fit a bed in the bedroom against a solid wall instead of against windows.  My solution was to find a piece of furniture to place in the upstairs hallway.  It couldn't be deeper than 14-15 inches to allow easy passage in the hall, so my options were limited. 

Last weekend, I spied this beauty at Goodwill for the reasonable price of $50.  It didn't smell foul and the hardware was in good working order.  The finish is worn here and there and the hardware is tarnished, but the piece still caught my eye.  My friend's husband was getting off work at a nearby store and was able to bring it home in his truck and help me carry it up the stairs.

Today, I finished organizing the contents using some precise towel folding strategies and $4 bins from Dollar General.  Frankly, I was aiming for higher quality material bins, but these were the exact color and size I needed, so I made the impulse buy and it worked out perfectly.  My old towels that don't match my new bathroom are rolled up in the bins in sets, perfect for when I need a few more towels. 

The bottom has plenty of room for extra toiletries and I got to use a few of my old plastic tubs from my classroom. 
With the matching bins and tax, this project came out to $65, a far cry for how much I would have spent to get a linen closet built into my space permanently.  Yay!  I'm so happy to finally not have to store my towels in my bedroom after nearly a year in this house! 

By the way, I got a new phone between taking photo 1 and photo 2.  What a difference that new flash makes!  Both pictures were taken at night with just the hallway light on.  This makes me happy, too!



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