For our final spring cleaning project of 2015, and we've tackled some
great ones, we are rolling up our sleeves and breaking out the elbow grease
as we attempt to clean, declutter and organize one of the most disorganized
wastelands here at CMS HQ and, yes, they do exist.
It is our linen closet, which is actually a horrible name
for this closet because it contains very little linen overall.
This closet also houses our first-aid stuff, board games, craft supplies,
wrapping paper, tissues, PT, TP, light bulbs, a thermal blanket,
a humidifier, our vacuum cleaner. I even have a bin here labeled "Misc."
I actually have no idea what's in this bin because I haven't touched it in over
five years, so who know what treasures I might find in this box.
But honestly, enough about that. Let's get down to business.
Remove everything from the closet.
We're going to start by removing everything from the closet
and I mean everything.
This allows me to give the closet shelves a good cleaning, and it allows me to
better see and sort all of the stuff that has been clogging up my closet shelves.
♪ [music] ♪
Right off the bat, I found a few items which actually belong
elsewhere in our home, and I found a few items that
can be just thrown out or put into the recycling bins.
So I've already freed up some space in the closet.
It might also be handy to have a keep, toss, donate zone set up so that while
you're removing everything, you can just sort as you go along.
Remember our rules about decluttering.
We've got a video on it, and I will link it for you down below.
Clean the shelves.
Start with a good vacuuming and then give the shelves
the old one-two, using your favorite all-purpose cleaner
or whip up some of your own like I have here.
It's just got a drop of dish soap and some tap water.
I've mixed it up in a spray bottle, and then you can spray down all
of your shelves and wipe everything nice and dry with a microfiber cloth.
At this point, consider placing some shelf liner down if you notice
you get scratches on shelves where you store bottles or boxes.
Recycle boxes for storage.
Now let's use some storage boxes to keep all like items together.
This is great timing because we just so happen to have some boxes
from our recent decluttering project, and I'm also going to repurpose
this shoebox to hold all of our craft supplies.
I found this old basket lying around, so I'm going to use it to store
all of my vacuum accessories. ♪ [music] ♪
Folding towels and linens.
Create a beautiful linen closet by making your linens and towels look hotel-ready.
I love folding my towels in thirds and then stacking them.
They look great, and nice, and fluffy, and it's a good way to double up
by stacking one set behind the other in deeper closets.
Go through each towel as you do this and just get rid of any which are worn,
stained, or super old and grungy towels that don't get used any more.
I think that two to three towels per person makes sense
and then a couple of guest sets if you host.
Use the old towels you no longer need in the closet as rags or just donate them
to a shelter or a pet shelter. They can have much better use elsewhere
than taking up valuable real estate in your sliver of a linen closet.
For linens, there's a great trick that's been floating around the Internet
for years now, and that is to use your pillowcase as a storage container
for the rest of the linen set. This looks beautiful, and if you want
to do it, all you have to do is stack your fitted sheet, flat sheet
and pillowcase together, place those three items into the second pillowcase,
and then just fold down the flap of that pillowcase
and store it in your linen closet.
Wrapping paper.
There's a slew of wrapping paper storage products out there,
but I have a hard time justifying shelling out 20 bucks to buy a product
that looks like a garbage can with a lid, especially when I have this
old IKEA container that could be a garbage can
that I bought for two bucks back in 2008 and looks like
it will be able to perform the exact same function.
Light bulbs.
For light bulbs, we've decided to move to a smaller container
from now on because we are switching to LED lights in our house.
Yes, we know they're more expensive, but they are energy efficient and you only
have to replace them about every 25 years. So we figure it's worth the investment.
♪ [music] ♪
All right. So here is the slimmed down, tidied, and decluttered version
of my linen closet. I'll give you a quick tour.
On the top left, we've got all of our toilet paper.
Then we have our tissues, paper towels.
We got rid of most of our board games, but I did keep Scrabble because,
you know, I love kicking Chad's butt when we play Scrabble.
Then we also have our sewing kit up here in the quintessential butter cookie tin.
Do any of you guys have your sewing kit in the butter cookie tin?
Let me know in the comments down below. I inherited this from my house,
and it's probably close to 30 years old.
Over here we've got our light bulbs. Then we have some candles
and a soap pump which we will use. We've got our craft and our first-aid
boxes over there. You can see we have slimmed down
our towels significantly. Chad and I were chatting while I was going
through this, and we realized that we only used about a third of the towels
that we had in here. So we're going to get rid
of everything else. And then down here we've got
our linens, the humidifier. We've got our wrapping paper
organized here, our vacuum, and of course our vacuum accessories.
It looks so much better in here. It is roomier.
It is a lot less stressful to think when we open the door
and we need to find something. We don't have to rummage
around for it now. We know exactly where it is.
We did it, Clean My Space nation. It took about two hours,
and if I may say so myself, the results are pretty amazing.
The best part is this project did not cost a thing.
Okay, well maybe it cost two bucks back in 2008,
but that is not bad at all considering.
Now it's your turn Clean My Space Nation.
I want you to tell me what is the state of your closets, and are you
going to try this project? Leave me a comment in the comment box
down below because I love reading about your progress and what it is
that you're doing during spring cleaning 2015.
If you want to tag us in any of your spring cleaning projects,
you can do so on Instagram. I'm @MelissaMaker.
He is @TheChadReynolds. We are @CleanMySpace.
There's a button down there that lets me know you care.
So click it if you liked this video and click this button right here
to subscribe and begin your journey to a cleaner life.
Thanks so much for watching, and we'll see you next time.
A special thanks to all of you, the chosen few who stuck around
to the very end of the video where I tell you about more juicy cleaning videos
that may interest you. If you look to your right, my left,
you will find two such videos, one that talks about cleaning
and organizing your bedroom closet and the other one that talks about
cleaning and organizing your front entryway closet.
You will see a link for both of those down below.
You will also see a link to CleanMySpace.com
where you can go to get all things cleaning.
We have hundreds of articles and videos, tips and tricks,
and a whole bunch more. See you next week folks.