Out of room for extra pillows and blankets? Have sheets and blankets stashed in every room in the house? Many apartments and older homes have no built-in linen closet, and no place to add one, even if you could. It’s hard to find space for sheets, comforters, blankets and pillows when you have no linen closet, but with a little creativity, you can easily make room for your linens.
Clean House
When you have no closet to stash your linens in, it’s easier to find space when you’ve pared down to the essentials. (For our purposes, linens include sheets, comforters, blankets, quilts, pillows and towels.)
Each bed in your home should have at least two sets of sheets — one for the bed, one for the laundry. Three, if you like spares. Anything above that is overkill, and just makes finding room for your linens more difficult. As for blankets, one for summer and an additional blanket or two for winter is ideal.
Anything that is torn or stained beyond repair should be tossed, as should comforter sets your children have outgrown, comforters, quilts or other items that you no longer use, and multiples of blankets and sheets. Consider donating extra blankets and sheets to your local homeless shelter, but call ahead to make sure they can use your donations.
Room-By-Room Organizing
When there’s no central linen closet in your home, linens often get stashed in odd places throughout the home. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Putting your linens right where you use them can save time and trouble, but only if you keep them in one location that’s easy to access. Designating storage for your linens in each room in the house can help keep them from taking up valuable space and make them easy to find when you need them.
Making Space
The space under the bed is one of the best places to store linens in bedrooms. An under-bed box is great for storing towels, sheets and thin blankets. Use vacuum-compression bags for larger items like comforters and pillows, reducing them to a manageable size for under-bed storage.
Under-bed boxes and bags can keep your items out of sight but close at hand, but if you have no space under the bed, try a trunk or even an attractive clothes hamper. A clothes hamper can also be used in a closet, if you have the room, keeping your linens clean and in one spot without taking up valuable space on shelves.
Tip: When using a trunk or hamper, keep it organized and neat by storing pillows and extra blankets on the bottom, sheets in the middle, and towels on top, so that the items you use most are easiest to get to.
Creating a Linen Closet
If you’ve got your heart set on a linen closet, but space or financial constraints make it seem impossible, don’t give up hope just yet. A coat closet can easily become a linen closet with the addition of a few shelves; if you can’t make structural changes to your home, or just don’t want the hassle, purchase a shelving unit that can fit in the coat closet.
A sturdy shelving unit can also work outside of a closet to create a linen “closet”; simply stash your linens in baskets or attractive storage boxes to keep them clean and organized.
You can also create a linen closet out of a piece of furniture that can be had for a song at many yard sales, thrift stores and flea markets — the now-outdated TV armoire. Flat-screen TVs have made these former living room and bedroom staples virtually useless, and the used furniture market is flooded with them. The strong shelves and generous dimensions of these cabinets make them perfect for storing linens, and even an unattractive TV armoire can be updated with a quick coat of paint.
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