How to Organize a Bathroom Linen Closet

Here is a simple yet effective bathroom closet organization idea to try out! Organizing a bathroom closet doesn’t have to be overcomplicated as long as you have the right bathroom closet organizer.  

About a year ago I was working on decluttering the house and came across a brilliant idea for organizing our linen closet.

In the few months leading up to this organizing and decluttering session, I had been receiving these great monthly gifts from Halos (the oranges company) with various gifts and crafting supplies in each one.

The containers they sent each month were super nice! I kept them because they were so sturdy and cute and I knew I would figure out a use for them someday.

I had given one or two to my children to use in their room for storing whatever.

But, as I was debating what to do with them, inspiration struck.

Our bathrooms have these built-in bathroom linen closets (or bathroom linen cabinets – whatever you want to call them) which can store quite a bit of both linens, toiletries, medicines, and other items.

Medicines and toiletries and makeup were on the top shelves, with linens in the bottom portion of the bathroom linen closets.

The problem with these items just hanging out individually is that we frequently knocked them over looking for what we needed.

We also couldn’t find what we were looking for easily, despite my efforts to organize where various items went on these bathroom linen closet shelves (it’s similar to the problems we had before organizing our spice cupboard).

It was becoming a bit of a pain point for me, regularly having to pick up items I accidentally knocked down from searching for items I needed from the bathroom linen closet.

And now the perfect solution was staring me in the face with these round Halos storage containers! They were the perfect size to fit on the shelves and have the door closed. Plus, I didn’t have to pay for any new bathroom closet organizers! Win!!

Bathroom Closet Organization

In order to organize a bathroom closet properly, you’ll need:

• Cleaning wipes
• Clean and empty storage canisters or bins or baskets
• Trash bag

How to Organize Bathroom Closet

1. Remove everything from your bathroom closet. Pull it all out. 

2. Wipe down each every bathroom closet shelf with some cleaning wipes or a soapy washcloth. Remove all that build up soap scum, lint, hairs, makeup, toothpaste, whatever! Get it clean! 

3. Go through all of the stuff you had in there. Toss anything that is expired (like medicines), that you never used and likely won’t ever use (think toiletry samples you received somewhere), that you don’t like (toothpaste flavor, deodorant that didn’t work for you), and that is just trash. 

A good idea too is to combine anything you can, remove items from bulky packaging, and so on. 

You can also determine if you need all those old towels, hand towels, washcloths, beach towels, pillowcases, etc that are in your bathroom linen closet. 

Hone into your inner Marie Kondo’s Spark Joy idea and only keep the best items and parting with the rest. 

I also remind you to recycle any plastic or cardboard products and otherwise use places to donate clothes for linens and other items. 

4. Sort the items you are keeping into like categories. Put all your stockpiled toiletries together by use.

Put all the oral products together (toothpaste, toothbrushes, floss, mouthwash), all the deodorant products together, all the lotions together, all the eye care products together (contacts, glasses, contact solution, eye drops), all the makeup together, all the hair products together (mousse, gel, brushes, combs, hair sprays, styling tools, blow dryer, etc), and so on. 

5. Place these organized and grouped items in your bathroom closet organizers. 

You won’t have the same containers as me. That’s okay. These bathroom closet organization ideas will work with bins, baskets, boxes, or whatever else you have on hand. 

I know growing up my mother had empty gallon ice cream buckets that she stored all the bars of soap in. That would work too! 

When putting things in these baskets and bins or containers, try to avoid stacking items, but instead putting them all upright so you can easily see, read, and identify the item from the edge of it. 

The benefit of this is that it makes it easier to see what you have! This helps you find what you were looking for faster and easier and thus making it so you stop buying more floss at the store because you thought you were out.

6. Label your bathroom closet organizers in some manner so you can easily know which container hold which bathroom closet items.

My canisters all had slightly different pictures on them and/or colors making it easier to know which ones are which (I kept all the bandages and Neosporin in the red bin… red for blood, get it?). 

 

7. Fold and put back your bathroom linens. 

You can do this as you like, but I do like the Marie Kondo folding method and organizing linen closet method.

You may want to get more baskets or bins to put the into. It will depend some on how deep your bathroom linen closets are and how many linens you have. 

8. You should now be done! 

Going through everything will likely take some time (at least an hour is my guess) but keeping things in containers with like items is a huge improvement upon the cluttered bathroom closet shelves we had before. 

Obviously, you may need other bathroom closet organization ideas to fit in your home. 

I know my blog contributor Jeni loves her Cabidor that fits right behind her bathroom door and stores many of her bathroom closet supplies and doesn’t take up any floor space.

You can see it in action in her post about how to get organized at home. 

I am not saying any way is better than another. The most important thing is always functionality! It has to be easy for you to use and quickly find what you are looking for. 

I’d love to know what you’ve done in terms of organizing a bathroom closet in the comments.