Linen Closet

Okay, with the advent of the new year, comes a plethora of weight losing tips, organization ideas, and a general need to revamp your life. My minor effort in this was to re-do my linen closet. As a minor confession/excuse, I've didn't had a linen closet in the house I grew up in. Sheets went into the bottom drawer of a dresser and extra towels were stacked neatly in a basket. There was no closet space. Now, I have an entire closet for my linens. Yikes. What to do...


What you see above was the current state of my closet. It was full of mismatched blankets, rags, sheets, and then a couple of things such as a smoke detector and holiday decorations. The first step was pulling EVERYTHING out. My queen size bed was over-flowing with stuff. I then refolding everything, stacking similar items together. I sorted out mismatched things and made a separate stack for things headed to the garage sale. The rags got pulled and moved to the laundry room for easier access and better storage. I had used a Christmas giftcard from The Container Store (best store ever!) to purchase among other things, a couple of blanket and sweater bags. Clean sheet sets went into the sweater bags to make pulling complete sets easy. I used the blanket bags to store extra pillows and keep them dust free. With the crazy Texas weather, we use blankets randomly, so there isn't really much point in putting them in bags. Extra pillows, however, aren't used as much and I wanted to keep them dust free.


After getting everything moved back in, these are the final results. What do you think?

A Bit Flakey

After perusing blogland, I came upon this fabulous creation. I love the simplicity of it. RACKS & Mooby did a great job. As a Christmas accent it's really cute and simple, but I wanted something that would last longer than just December.


Besides, around here we RARELY get to see any of the white stuff. Just doesn't happen. (We have had some, but never more than 1/2 inch so we only experience the romance of snow, not the mess.) Even if I have to frame it on my walls, I want to see snow.

Off to Michael's I went. I too hit their sale stuff and picked up plenty of foam snowflakes of various shapes, sizes and glitter! (Love me some glitter...) I decided I wanted to put my flakes up in the same place I put my Halloween "decorations."

After getting more of the same blue shimmer paper I laid out my flakes dry fitting them before breaking out the glue. (A big thanks to Zach for helping Sissi with this project! I had snowflakes everywhere!)

Because my foam was going to be behind glass, I didn't worry too much with foam glue. Instead I used my trusty Scotch Quick Dry. I use this stuff for all of my scrapbooking and really recommend it. (Nope, not getting paid by anyone, just sayin'.)

After getting everything set just so, I repeated my design 4 times. Hey, I was tired and didn't feel like being original each time. Sometimes, there is no need to reinvent the wheel and that's okay! I love the final look.


What's really funny, is that when I put up the flakes, I flipped some of them upside down. Oops. While this goes against my anal tendencies, it really hasn't bothered me too much and I'm living with it just fine. Imagine!

Please admire the cleanliness of my living room. I promise you it was picked up specially for this picture and returned to "normal" shortly after it was snapped!

A Piece of my Mind...

I am about to give you a piece of my mind. Please take this seriously, I don't have much mind to spare... ;) Construction companies need to listen to more women (and possibly men) in making their products. I'm not talking pink cutsie tools. I'm talking more along the lines of making tools easier to use, access and store. Ever try and put a drill back in the suitcase like container? Where exactly do they expect me to put the cords? Maybe I should YouTube it. I'm betting there is a video out there somewhere.

Take for example sand paper. If you buy in bulk, which I do, you get it in narrow cardboard boxes, granted, they are sturdy, but they have large holes in the front and back of the boxes for displaying their product. (I'm sure it also cuts down on their cost.) Now this presents a problem. I have never used an entire sheet of sandpaper at once. I always seem to have at least one square left over, that when I put it back in the box, falls out of the hole. Grrr.

This past black Friday, Sears had an advertisement for a sandpaper organizer. Brilliant!! The ad had it listed half price for $9.99 but didn't give a picture. When I made it to Sears, their organizer was a plastic file organizer. You want me to spend $10 on that? (In case you're new or have forgotten, my family lovingly calls me a cheapskate.)

Nope, not gonna happen. What was going to happen was sweetly asking my mother for an old file organizer she was going to recycle.


After trying the paper inside the organizer, I discovered it was a little tight. So, out came the scissors and I cut out every other "wall." Sorry for the poor picture, I need to work on my camera skills.


With my trusty Sharpie, I labeled the leftover walls with their new names. 60, 80, 100, 150, 220, Drywall Med, Drywall Fine & Specialty (mouse). Finally, I had a cheap easy to use system to solve the issues with my leftover pieces and unused pieces. It wasn't hard, it was just frustrating that someone wanted to charge $20 (full price) for it. I like using my tools and just wish there was an easier way to store and organize them without spending MASSIVE amounts of money. Anyone have any ideas you use to organize your tools??