The hall closet can very easily become a mess. Sheets, towels, toiletries… they can into one giant messy avalanche. Our system has been to contain all the little stuff in plastic totes, allowing us to easily carry things into another room should we need to use them. Plus putting things away is a breeze. Here’s how I’ve organized our hall closet…

As a kid, I learned what happens when you keep candles in the garage with the rest of the seasonal decor – melted-twisty halloween candles! While, that happened to work for that holiday (they actually looked pretty cool), but i’d like to protect my candles from melting so they get stored in the house. Plus it makes it really easy to fish them out in a power outage.

Any extra toiletties are put into a tote, taking advantage of the height of the shelf. Plus, it easier to keep things from avalanching when opening the door!

We’re Costco shoppers, so taking advantage of the height of this shelf lets us keep an entire costco-size package in the closet

 SHELF #2

I put together a first aid box with three drawers, which I recently explained in another post. Even if i’m bleeding, it’s easy to find what I need!

All of our medicine & illness-related items go in another box.

When I fold towels in half, I can only make two stacks to towels, folding them in thirds allows three stacks. Hand towels are on the left, washcloths in the basket on the left. Notice that the towels are NOT folded perfectly, just close enough.

We have two sets of sheets & duvet covers per bed. All the beds are the same size, so I store like-with-like (i.e. all the duvet covers in one stack, sheets in another). I like the idea of storing sheet sets inside the matching pillowcase, which I might do in the future.

All the little bottles, travel hair dryer, and bags go in this box. Having everything in a box with a lid keeps me from over-buying those cute little bottles of shampoo!

Same with the travel toiletries, having extra cords and cables in a box keeps them under control

We’re redecorating a bit right now, so I don’t want to get rid of any extra frames. I’m always puttering around the house and moving things around, so having a place for the temporary extras saves me some money. There are some curtains & other home decor things in the red box.

Living in earthquake country, it is VERY important to have extra water at the house. This is just some of my stash. I change it out every year (which reminds me as I type this that it’s time to do it!)

 So there you have it… It’s not magazine perfect, but everything seems to stay in its place. And isn’t that most important?