How to Organize Your Linen Closet

Mess causes stress, simple as that. It is proven that clutter negatively affects our brain and emotions: it has an impact on memory, performance, the ability to process information, and many other things. And while it is difficult to avoid clutter, especially in work environments, we can at least do our best to make our homes feel like a calm, relaxing oasis.

A simple way to get started is to choose a single space you’d like to declutter: it can be your work desk, kitchen drawers, bathroom cabinets…

We decided to tackle the linen closet where we store our bed linens, towels, and other home textiles. We are doing it with the help of Linda Haglund, an interior stylist and photographer whose linen closet organizing skills are really enviable.

Linda lives in Sweden with her husband and two kids, Julia and Arvid. She has created a beautiful home for her family filled with natural materials, flowers, and plants from her garden. However, keeping the space tidy isn’t an easy task, especially with little munchkins running around.

According to Linda, storage is very important to her and other Swedes — they even have a saying that directly translates to “smart storage is alpha and omega” in keeping a tidy home. To achieve that, Linda has four basic rules she applies to her linen closet and other spaces as well:

Less is more

Having fewer quality items that we actually like makes much more practical sense than hoarding stuff that isn’t useful. Before you start putting things into shelves, go through your linens and pick out which ones are still in use, which ones you’d like to keep for special occasions, and which ones are better off discarded or upcycled into something new.

Establish a system

It really helps to establish patterns in the way you organize your linens: you can do it by category, size, color, room, frequency of use, etc. In Linda’s case, she obviously loves to color-coordinate. A simple rule of thumb is to keep your most used items in the front, switch it up based on seasons, and use labels for easy indication.

Use organizers: boxes, baskets, bins...

Having organizers really helps with keeping things in place. Linda uses natural wood bowls to store her bath towels, which adds a nice pop of color to her closet. She also keeps a roomy linen laundry bag to stow away all her unwashed linens. A good idea is to store your sheets inside matching pillowcases — this way you will easily keep track of your sheet sets.

Learn to fold

Proper folding can save you tons of space! You can go for the regular flat fold or you can be more inventive and roll your linens. The latter helps avoid folding lines that some people just hate. Probably the most difficult item to fold is a fitted sheet — read our blog post and learn to fold a fitted sheet in five simple steps.