As the linen closet is located in our guest bathroom, I really didn't think about it a lot (you know, out of sight, out of mind). But a couple of months ago, I was putting away sheets and almost gagged on the unsightliness of the space. Not only had I let the light bulb die (thus the flashy-flash pictures), but I had also allowed the closet to become a catch-all for anything and everything that didn't have a home somewhere else in the house!
Sick out. Spare curtains, spare cushion covers, old blankets, beach towels, bath towels leftover from the Mr.'s bachelor days, medicine, paper goods, napkins, plastic ware....I mean, what WASN'T in that closet?! Disgustoid.
I thought about making this a massive overhaul and painting the inside of the closet, but really, that's kind of a waste of a quart of paint. Really, all the space needed was some order, function, and a little bit of pretty. Wanting to make the closet seem more coordinated and calm, I was super amped when I stumbled upon this wrapping paper at Home Goods for $3 per roll.
The paper was more plastic-y than paper-y so I knew it would be the perfect amount of durability for wrapping the shelves of the closet.
I then started looking into baskets. I wanted to find a basket that was white or grey to go with the shelf paper and that was either solid or had a very tight weave to hide the contents, thus decreasing the visual clutter in the closet. While at Target one day, I found these Y-Weave baskets:
Tight weave, yes, but white? Absolutely not. However, the baskets WERE on clearance and they had the exact number/size of baskets that I needed, so I figured the savings were totally worth it, and I could just slap on a couple of layers of spray paint to get the white basket I had in mind!
So I bought all of the baskets I needed, and started placing items into the baskets to a) be sure I had enough baskets and b) start weeding out items we no longer needed. That took our closet here:
Already a TON better, but obviously not the right coloring. Off to spray painting land!
After a very light first coat, we were definitely headed in the right direction!
While the baskets were curing and in between coats of paint, I removed all of the shelves from the closet so that I could wrap them in the paper I found at Home Goods.
This is when I realized that, yeah, the closet isn't in the best shape wall-wise, but seriously, it's just a closet. So I forged on with my plan to just wrap the shelves and ignored my impulse to slap a layer of paint on those tragic walls. Wrapping the shelves just like I would wrap a book, in about an hour, I had beautifully patterned shelves in my closet!
I felt like it already looked one thousand times better! And after the baskets had finished drying and curing and had been reloaded with their contents, I was smitten!
I used Martha's Adhesive Metal Bookplates to hold labels for each of the basket's contents.
So now, the top shelves hold the now boxed and concealed paper products, plastic ware, and blankets:
The middle shelves house beach towels and bath towels:
And the baskets on the sides of the closet house pillowcases and hand towels:
And the bottom shelves house sheets:
Everything finally has a pretty home!
We even have room to grow!
As for all of those spare curtains, cushion covers, etc? Well, most of them were donated, but the ones that chose to stay are now housed in some drawers I used to use in my classroom, but no longer needed (thus the doodles on the fronts of some of the drawers):
These are now screaming for some labels of their own, but I haven't quite gotten around to that yet.
My how things change with the help of some baskets and shelf paper!
Before:
After:
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