this post is just another one of my gentle reminders to make your home work for you.
like, in our home, we have a linen closet.
and for the longest time, it was such a waste of space because I keep spare towels and spare sheets in the room they’re needed. like, our spare king sheets are kept in our bedroom in my nightstand. our spare crib sheets are kept in the nursery closet. our beach towels are kept under our guest bathroom sink.
so our linen closet was existing, but not well-utilized.
until I realized it didn’t have to be used for linens.
make your home work for you. if a linen closet doesn’t work for you, make it into something else.
so our linen closet houses our filing system of household papers, manuals, tax stuff, car receipts, vet records. it stores allllll our gift wrap. and it’s the landing pad for our first aid and medicine, as well as alllllll those handy reference papers from the doctor.
this space now works for us one thousand percent.
now, all that to say, organizational possibilities are endless, and not necessarily limited to just extra closet space. even if you don’t have a spare, empty-ish closet, you can still use the following concepts and tweak them to make them work in your space. making your home work for you is not dependent on closet space, i assure you.
(when we lived in the tiniest of apartments, pegboards, wall hooks, door hooks, door racks, ikea kallax units, the ikea catalogue in general, bed risers, and underbed boxes were my absolute bffs.)
ready?
here’s the blessed closet in all its glory:
let’s break it down into each zone.
our filing system
I have four of these slim filing boxes, which is perfect because our shelves are pretty narrow. (Labels are just blank business cards.) I know there are an infinite number of ways to store and organize your documents - this is just what works for us. You do you! I will say once you figure out a way that you love, it reallyyyyy streamlines a huge area of your life that you didn’t realize was stressful - at least that’s how I felt. Now whenever papers come in, we know what to do. And when we need a paper, we know where to look. GAME CHANGING.
We have four boxes:
house
this is an old binder (repurposed from my student teaching days, ha - i never throw away any binder, box, tub, or drawer), filled with every single important paper we received when buying our home and moving into our neighborhood. you know all those papers you’d like to be able to look at later on and kept in one spot? it’s in the binder.
we also have a few hanging files for hoa stuff, landscaping stuff, insurance stuff, etc.
the baribeaus (shown above)
this is our family box. anything having to do with us goes in here.
we have three binders (one for my car, one for brett’s car, one for our dogs) full of page protectors where we file away any sort of related document, receipt, record, or dog tag. then we have a few hanging files for mainly health and financial stuff.
this box is incredibly helpful - knowing where all our family-related stuff is a jewel. recently, i was convinced that we were overcharged for the dogs’ vaccines…so brett checked the binder for last year’s record and confirmed that I was just going crazy.
or, i needed to order glasses online and knew that our eyeglass prescriptions were in this box.
(having a car binder for me is super helpful come tax time as well.)
my yearly tasks and expenses list reminds me when to get dog vaccines, have the cars inspected, and schedule our annual eye appointments, just to name a few examples.
note: we don’t keep any papers in any of these boxes that could cause a huge headache should they fall in the wrong hands. (like, if we were to experience a break-in.) these boxes are for allllll those adulting papers that you need to keep (or, “do i need to keep? let’s keep just in case” papers.) like business expense receipts, dog shot records, HOA rules, and water softener manuals - that kind of stuff. we do have a hidden, locked firesafe box for the important, important things. we also have a shredder.
above I screenshot photos from my “filing system” highlight on my instagram - a great place to peek if you’d like to see more photos inside these boxes.
manuals
i know, i know. people disagree with me here since so many manuals are online. i have hanging files, categorized by room and then in each hanging file I’ll keep any manual I deem important. (I’ll also keep spare parts/warranties/all that fun stuff in here, too.)
i will say, this box o manuals has proved very, very handy. when I blew up the microwave and almost burnt the house down (true story) in 2018, Brett was able to find our microwave manual to identify which microwave model we needed to buy to fit our built in, as our old one was a charred remain with not a legible model number in sight. and in 2021 when texas had the disaster of an ice storm and everyone’s pipes were freezing, Brett referenced our water softener manual (amongst other manuals) to see about instructions, care, and troubleshooting. (also, we had no power and therefore no internet that week, so thank gawd we had those manuals.)
taxes
okay, again, there are lots of ways to do this. this is just what I’ve found reallyyy works for me.
for my small business, I keep a one-inch binder full of page protectors with the year written on the spine - and I keep this current year’s binder at my desk. and throughout the year, I drop any business-related receipt into said page protectors. then, come tax time, i plug my numbers into my CPA’s tax prep organizer (and, around the same time, any income/tax documents I receive I also drop into those page protectors). and the binder o tax stuff gets added to the tax filing box.
so this box is just full of past years’ binders.
(yes, I know about quickbooks - I wasn’t a fan. between my receipt binder, my business invoicing software Dubsado, and my CPA, I’ve found a groove I reallyyy like. and it’s all super simple for me.)
our first aid + medicine + dog stuff
As always, you do what works best for you. But one of the first things I tell people they should consider doing to really streamline their life is to figure out a medicine cabinet situation that they love. I’ve found that I reallyyyy like…
…lazy susans for our medicine stash. my prepared-ish home blogpost talks more about how I feel a lottt better having a fully supplied medicine cabinet. one because we live in the boonies, but also because the last thing I want to do when someone doesn’t feel well is leave the house. and I love that lazy susans lets me easily see what we have on hand…and lets us get to things without knocking everything over. (it also helps me see what we’re low on or what has expired - one of my routines in both March and September on my yearly tasks and expenses list is to check these things.)
…using a small, sentimental mug to corral our thermometers.
…categorizing each lazy susan: baby, cold/flu, allergy/itch/bug bite medicine, pain relief, etc.
…pinning important reference papers from the doctor (like the list of pregnancy-safe meds) on the back wall behind the medicine.
…a portable tote for our first aid. I actually use an old book box from back when I was a teacher, but I just wanted a smaller box that could easily be taken out of the closet to wherever first aid was needed. and between brett working in the yard and me being a clumsy florist, i feel like we move this tub around quite often.
…having first aid reference materials tucked behind the first aid box. (mine are from the red cross.) I also like having a physical reference book, just in case we’re without power and internet. like, when we had that crazy winter storm that caused all the power outages in texas? my phone was useless. it was charged, but with everyone nearby trying to use data, I couldn’t have looked up anything if I wanted to.
…keeping my dog first aid/medicine stuff in here, too. our dogs don’t take any medicine other than the monthly heartworm preventative, so mainly we just keep that with some kongs, a whole bunch of dog tape, a soft cone of shame, and dog shampoo in here. (I
…buying a year’s worth of heartworm preventative every February when the dogs get their annual shots - again, my yearly tasks + expenses list reminds me to do this.
also, hi, hello. one of the biggest, most helpful things I ever did for myself was invest in a pile of streamlined, simplified gift wrap I love. so we hung a door rack on a closet door, and I bought a few of my favorite gift wrapping staples. and while this might seem trivial, whenever I do need to wrap a gift - which, let’s be real, is inevitable between holidays, baby showers, and birthday parties - I’m always so happy to have done this.
these, these, and these gift bags (I also use these for my business)
plain wrapping paper like this (could also be used for future crafts, projects)
custom gift tags from my sister’s shop
we have a few that say “a gift from haley wynn” or “a gift from julie kaye” so that all we have to do is tie it on the bag - works for birthday gifts, meal trains, anything!
note: I keep our Christmas wrapping paper in this organizer in our attic with the rest of our Christmas stuff.
bonus: our paper towel stash we never use
did you see that at the top of the closet there? we keep our spare rolls of paper towels at the top of this closet. but we hardly ever use them.
story time: a few years ago, we had a roll of paper towels on our kitchen countertop. brett used them constantly…and I’m a complete bounty snob, so between my high maintenance taste and brett’s lightning speed consumption of entire rolls, we were creating a superrrr expensive habit. (and there’s the whole these-aren’t-great-for-the-earth thing.)
so I moved the roll of paper towels to below our kithcen sink. out of sight, out of mind.
then I got plenty of kitchen rags, dish towels, soft cloths (for KK, for cleaning), and linen napkins. enough so that I only have to wash these on Towel Tuesdays, enough that we never run out, and enough that we hardly ever tap into our extra paper towel supply anymore. although these rags, cloths, and cloth napkins are reallyyyy nice from a smoothly-running-our-household standpoint, they were AMAZING during that whole paper-good-shortage in March.
we also have a stash of old towels, handy for spills, leaks, and our Texas Snowpocolypse + Save the Freezing Pipes Nightmare of 2021.
so now we have a shelf of paper towels that we hardly ever use. we’re super glad to have them, but we’re even more glad to not go through them at lightning speed anymore. (our grocery budget is glad, too.)
there ya have it. a closet that was underperforming…and is now the MVP of both our house and our life. arguably one of the most visited areas of our home, second to the pantry. really this is a love story about our linen closet. a cinderella story more specifically, if you will - all thanks to a few out-of-the-box tweaks.
so I’ll leave you with this: if you’re looking to streamline or simplify an area of your life, might I suggest starting with one of these areas? your medicine cabinet or your adulting papers, maybe? a gift wrap solution that would bring you joy? or, or! a set of rags or two to help decrease that paper towel dependence? maybe even tackling a closet - or an area of your home - to make it work for you?
just a few thoughts from your dear friend haley. as always, you do whatever works for you!
