Home Organization Week Seven - The Linen Closet

What I call my linen closet, really isn't one at all.  It has very little linen in it.  It's basically a closet we built when we moved in this home.  

When we moved in, the only closet, besides in the bedrooms, was a coat closet.  It's arrangement  divided the living room and family room and created an entry area.  We decided to take it out to open up the area.  So that left me with no closet whatsoever.  Since the family room was very large, and we were going to be using it for a dining room anyway, we took five foot off one end and divided it into two closets: one for linen/storage and the other for a walk-in closet in our son's room.  So that gave me a four and a half by five and a half foot linen/storage closet!  We put the shelves that were in the family room in this closet.  You would not believe the amount of stuff that closet holds!  

When we put together our walk-in pantry, it created a giant shuffle.  I was able to move all kinds of stuff out of my linen closet to the kitchen, leaving me with a very empty space.

Here's my closet before the shuffle:

A large portion of my space was taken up with dishes!  It's my good dishes that we use for special occasions.  And since I have a weakness for beautiful dishes, inherited from my mother and grandmother, my collection keeps growing!  I just recently added two more sets.  

Anyway, this collection took up almost half of my storage space.  As you can see in my kitchen/pantry post, I now have a space for all my dishes in a kitchen cabinet.  That definitely freed up space in this closet!

Here it is now:

We have a lot of games!!  Didn't quite realize how many until I organized these shelves.  The highchair on top is used frequently by my three smallest grandchildren.

I still have some kitchen type items in there, mostly my canning jars and vases.  And some cupcake stands and such that I will eventually make room for in my pantry.  And the fourth shelf down holds paint cans, which I like to keep in an easy to get to place for the many projects I have going.  Maybe someday, I will be finished with all my projects and can send the paint cans to the shop!

You might have noticed the floor.  Yep, that's the sub-floor showing!  That's the one thing we didn't get done before we moved in five years ago.  We are getting ready to add a fireplace to our home, and when we do, the linen/storage closet door will have to be moved to another wall.  Hopefully, when that happens, we'll get the floor covered.