Last month was all about doing things for other people. This month–the month of resolutions, after all–is about doing a few good things for yourself. Amid vows to cut back calories, ramp up exercise and call your family more often, consider the rewards of making a few improvements around the house for your eyes only. Spend a little time on your home’s forgotten zones–those miniature black holes into which matter is mysteriously pulled, and from which it never seems to escape: linen closets, medicine chests, wrapping paper drawers and that truly grungy cabinet under the kitchen sink. These projects are by no means big. But streamlining and organizing such personal, inconspicuous spaces can make a big difference. Maybe no one but you will notice, but that’s the point.
The luxury of linens alone
The linen closets should be the easiest closet to keep uncluttered. After all, the closet’s name tells you what you should keep on its shelves–and that is the first step to getting a linen closet in shape, says Ann Sullivan, the owner of Abrielle, an upscale linens shop in Washington. Ideally, take everything out and find other homes (the garbage?) for anything that’s not a sheet or a towel.
Wait–don’t start filling up the shelves again yet. Sullivan recommends lining them with scented paper once a year. Then, survey your sheets and towels. Almost everyone has some they haven’t used in a while, whether it be sheets without pillowcases or towels without plush. Put those aside and give them to your vet, as Sullivan does annually, or the local Humane Society, both of which have a constant need for washable bedding. A women’s shelter might also be an option.
Store sheets by size: king on one shelf, queen on another, twin on a third. Group flat and fitted sheets and matching pillowcases together. It’s sometimes easier to match towels by color, Sullivan says, but she usually stacks bath and hand towels in separate piles, washcloths in a third. (A cleaning tip: Avoid dryer sheets or fabric softener on towels, despite advertisers’ urging. For fluffiest results, Sullivan says, shake sheets and towels vigorously after they’ve been washed and before they’re thrown into the dryer.)
“Towels that are well taken care of can last up to 20 years,” she said.
Freshly laundered sheets and towels should be placed on the bottom of the pile so linens are rotated and used evenly. If space is limited, Sullivan says, store seasonal or bulky items somewhere else. Beach towels and comforters take turns in a closet in her basement. Table linens are stored in the dining room. Guest sheets and towels are found in the guest room.
A prescription for tidiness
Even the most fervent of housecleaners may balk at purging the medicine cabinet, as if discarding the various potions, pills, ointments and paraphernalia therein were tantamount to tempting fate. The same people who pour milk down the kitchen sink on midnight of the sell-by date will hold on to prescription drugs for years, doubtful that pharmaceuticals can go “bad,” and reluctant to be caught without a single painkiller.
We are, maybe for good reason, a little afraid of our medicine cabinets. They hold the ugly truth about which parts of us need tweezing, extracting, soothing, salving. It’s no coincidence that they’re so often found hiding behind mirrors: Medicine cabinets are repositories of our secret selves, which is why peeking inside those not your own is unforgivable.
Just as unforgivable, though, is not peeking into your own medicine cabinet every now and then to see what can be–and what must be–thrown out.
“No matter how nice and clean your bathroom is, if it isn’t organized, you feel frustrated as soon as you step into it in the morning,” says Barbara Sallick, co-founder and senior vice president of design for Waterworks, the high-end bath and kitchen retailer. She cleans out her medicine cabinet every three to four months, consolidating as many items as possible–pouring half-empty bottles of nail-polish remover into a single one, for example. “It’s cathartic,” she says.
Not long ago, Sallick opened her medicine cabinet door and “things began falling down all around me. The detritus was so annoying. And I thought: I know better.” So she went out and bought some small, transparent Lucite containers, and became vigilant about keeping like items together in their tiny plastic chambers. “Now when I open the cabinet door, everything is in its logical place, and it’s immediately visible.”
As for medicines, don’t ignore those expiration dates, warns Joseph Ofosu, an assistant dean at Howard University’s School of Pharmacy.
Not only can medicines lose their effectiveness over time, but “they can actually be harmful,” he says. “Their chemical integrity may be affected, as well as your body’s ability to break them down properly.”
He recommends taking expired medications back to your pharmacy for safe disposal, rather than tossing them in a wastebasket, where children or pets might find them. And as logical and simple as it may seem, don’t flush them down the toilet.
“They can find their way into the water supply,” says Ofosu. “They might be toxic themselves, or they might end up destroying helpful bacteria that are already present. People should never forget: These are chemicals.”
Everything under the kitchen sink
Oh, the smug satisfaction of a well-kept cabinet under the kitchen sink.
No one else knows, or cares, that the glass cleaner and furniture polish are arranged by height, left to right, or that the sponges, scrubbies and rubber gloves are corralled in a plastic bin that matches the slightly bigger plastic bin holding cat food and hair-ball medicine. No one else in the world sees the white, washable shelf liner on guard against scummy spills and rust stains, or the little hook with a suction cup that holds the drying dish cloth.
But at the end of a ragged day it is a small but definite pleasure to put the dishwasher detergent back in its customary front-row spot and close the cabinet door on a job well done.
The cupboard under the kitchen sink surely has the highest yuck potential of any spot in the house: crusted scouring powder, broken spray bottles, grungy sponges, funky smells. Its damp recesses are prime real estate for mold and bacteria too.
All of which means it is one of the best places to get fresh for a new year. Forget impressing anyone. This is not a place company sees, but a place you see, day after dishwashing day.
The first step, say kitchen specialists, is to store only what should be stored there: cleaning gear–not Sterno cans, ant poison or paint thinner. If space allows, no garbage, the biggest undersink germbreeder, smellmaker and spacetaker.
One of the main things people ask for when they redo their kitchens is a pullout cabinet for garbage, said Jan Goldman, a kitchen designer at Creative Kitchens in Rockville, Md. If a remodel is not in the cards, consider rollout trash bins on pullout tracks and other clever space dividers sold by hardware stores and home organizing retailers.
Valerie Stump is advertising manager with Henkel Consumer Adhesives, maker of Duck brand organization products. Company research has shown, Stump says, that the undersink cabinet is one of the most disorganized, least-cleaned areas of the house.
“There’s a lot of moisture and yucky stuff under there, and a lot of fixtures–like pipes and garbage disposers–so it’s a challenge to clean. And it’s an underutilized storage area. People throw things under there and can’t find them. Things get lost in the awkward space and aren’t accessible.”
Duck products aim to make it easier to get at stuff and easier to clean: Storage shelves designed to fit around plumbing; drawers that slide; dividers to organize soap, scrub brushes and disposable wipes; caddies that hold plastic grocery bags; non-skid shelf liners that can be thrown into the wash. The line is carried by Lowe’s and Wal-Mart, or check www.duckproducts.com or 800-321-0253 for local availability.
Staging a wrap-up
In many homes, flattened rolls of wrapping paper and snarls of ribbon are still cluttering the dining room table or the floor of a spare bedroom. So this is a perfect time to pick a more permanent spot. Under the bed is a common solution, but who wants to dig around when your 5-year-old is already late for a birthday party?
If you want something basic, Meryl Starr, a professional organizer and author of “The Home Organizing Workbook,” suggests investing in a wrap organizer. It can be as simple as a large plastic storage box, which Starr keeps in her garage.
Sally Foster, who founded the gift wrap company that bears her name, has two wrap areas in her home in Spartanburg, S.C.
“I keep large rolls of wrap mounted on the wall in a storage room. And then in a room over our garage, a cabinet stores gift bags, paper and everything else.”
For something more substantial, home-storage-system companies, such as California Closets, can design gift-wrap centers to fit available space in any room.
“People are really into gift wrapping and we are doing more and more of these,” says Lisa Lennard, a company design consultant.
Most of us have at least 50 annual occasions that traditionally call for giving a gift, according to a Hallmark spokeswoman. That number is growing, reflecting longer life spans (more birthdays), second weddings and more in-home entertaining.
