The "perfect" linen closet would include... archived

How deep/wide is the closet in question?

Ah yes! It is a pretty typical deep closet. 3' x3'.
I think the extra depth could be used more efficiently.

I am doing something similar with the little closet (37"x36") in my new walk in closet. This will eventually be the primary linen closet since once we renovate the main hallway bath, we will be turning the closet in the hallway to a shower. I have been 'researching' various things to make the most of this space. Like you I am considering adding top to bottom shelving and some nice features such as behind door storage as well as pull out shelves, baskets or boxes for storage of small items etc. These are some of the pics in my ideabook.

If the closet is not too deep, you may want to consider making the most of it by replacing it with a built in as it will allow you to make use of most of the space. That is what we did in our master bath. The original door with shelves, was replaced with this built in which made use of every square inch. It has a built in hamper (lower left) built in which I totally love.

Wow! You are just ahead of me!
I know from experience that the rolling shelves (pictured) are terrible unless they attach a high back edge to keep the towels from falling off and getting caught behind the shelf when you try to push it back in.

I want to keep the lovely original wood door to the hall (because it matches all of the others)so I will just be fitting out the interior.
Luckily, I have enough depth to hang the ironing board on the wall in front of the shelves etc.

kmk said:

Ah yes! It is a pretty typical deep closet. 3' x3'.
I think the extra depth could be used more efficiently.

3' is a nice depth. You can definitely get more use by doing shelves all the way to the ceiling. If you do 12" deep shelves you will have some additional space on the sides and behind the door that you can leverage.

kmk said:

I want to keep the lovely original wood door to the hall (because it matches all of the others)so I will just be fitting out the interior.
Luckily, I have enough depth to hang the ironing board on the wall in front of the shelves etc.

Yes if it is that deep it does not make sense to do a built in. We only had 1.5' depth in the bathroom so it made sense to do the built in.

That is a good point about the pull out shelves. I was going to use them more for baskets to keep small items that are always in the way allowing me to get to them items without actually having to take the entire basket out. But that is a really good point. Yes you can easily hang the ironing board on the side. I keep the "main" ironing board in the laundry room but I am considering getting one for behind the door since I may be more encouraged to use it if I can just easily pull it down. I often don't wear items simply because they have to be ironed.

pmartinezv said:

If the closet is not too deep, you may want to consider making the most of it by replacing it with a built in as it will allow you to make use of most of the space. That is what we did in our master bath. The original door with shelves, was replaced with this built in which made use of every square inch. It has a built in hamper (lower left) built in which I totally love.

PMARTINEZV - is that a custom piece? I just took the doors off my linen closet and am looking for ideas of what to do with the space. Your built-in looks wonderful!

If we could redo our linen closet I'd probably do deep drawers or baskets, just because it's deep and I lose things in there. I tend to be cluttery though.

Oh, and ours is lined in cedar and I love it. The towels all smell nice when they come out of there. Team cedar over here.

Oh, and a light. Definitely include a light.

Our Linen Closet is directly over our Kitchen Located Laundry room and has a chute right into a cabintet above the washer dryer...neat (since it was in a house built in 1937)

Esiders said:

pmartinezv said:

If the closet is not too deep, you may want to consider making the most of it by replacing it with a built in as it will allow you to make use of most of the space. That is what we did in our master bath. The original door with shelves, was replaced with this built in which made use of every square inch. It has a built in hamper (lower left) built in which I totally love.

PMARTINEZV - is that a custom piece? I just took the doors off my linen closet and am looking for ideas of what to do with the space. Your built-in looks wonderful!

Yes. JV Woodworking built it. I just gave him the design I wanted and he built it to fit the space and match the vanities. I love it. I love the draws to keep the hair dryer, curly iron etc, and the bottom for cleaning products. The built in hamper is my favorite, and there is plenty of storage above for toilet paper and other bathroom stuff.

stateguy said:

Our Linen Closet is directly over our Kitchen Located Laundry room and has a chute right into a cabintet above the washer dryer...neat (since it was in a house built in 1937)

That is so cool. I asked about this and it seems that new fire codes wont allow this type of thing any longer

@stateguy, you are lucky indeed!! (A number of my cousins would get caught in their 2 story laundry chute in an old farm house.) A dumbwaiter, to hoist the baskets of clean laundry back upstairs, would be amazing as well!

afa said:

If we could redo our linen closet I'd probably do deep drawers or baskets, just because it's deep and I lose things in there. I tend to be cluttery though.

Oh, and ours is lined in cedar and I love it. The towels all smell nice when they come out of there. Team cedar over here.

Oh, and a light. Definitely include a light.

That is what we have in the hallway now (Cedar). I know I will miss it when it is gone. But the main bath is pretty small and we can make better use of that closet by adding the space to the bathroom .

I learned that for cluttery the best thing are boxes and baskets. They keep things out of sight so it does not look messy, they are great for all those little things that you never know where they should go, and they allow you to stack them (boxes) so you make the most of the space, and they don't require a large investment.

I am thinking of adding something like this to the side of the closet (the tall one) since like you we have the space after we add the shelves, and I will not be hanging the ironing board, to hold extra bottles of shampoo, shower get etc. perhaps the bottom ones for cleaning products.

We had a similar linen closet in our previous home, and loved it. I installed shelves top to bottom, just deep enough to hold all the linens. In front of the shelves I was able to store the vacuum cleaner and brooms/mops, and had a hook on the wall to hold the ironing board. You could easily use the back of the door for very shallow storage for small toiletries, but I'd be careful about adding weight to an original door. Too much and the door can start to sag on the hinges or even pull away from the door frame. That happened in our previous master closet, during the time of the previous owners.

Yes, I'd love to design ones deep enough for toilet paper rolls!

Every other shelf (or so) half depth or narrower = more shelves and easier access. Much better use of the 3' depth, imo.

One or more pullout shelves (think bread board) for folding, searching through boxes/baskets, etc.

Big thumbs up to your idea of "medicine cabinet" shelves/baskets on the back of the door.

If you can find a way, a full-height section for ironing board, mop, etc. (oops, I see you already have that planned).

If you put in a light, you could consider having it turn on automatically using a button in the door jamb (loved these closet lights in a 1920s/30s rental we lived in). Or I suppose more modern, motion-activated. Unless it might inadvertently light up a nearby bedroom.

Easier-to-use linen closet is a home improvement that will truly improve your life several times a week, imo, so...

enjoy!!

mjc said:

If you put in a light, you could consider having it turn on automatically using a button in the door jamb (loved these closet lights in a 1920s/30s rental we lived in). Or I suppose more modern, motion-activated. Unless it might inadvertently light up a nearby bedroom.

Our contractor did this in our master bedroom and baby's room closets when we switched to double doors to get access to a larger portion of the closet. It is really nice to have the light come on when you open the door, and it encourages you to close the door after you are done since that is the only way to turn off the light.

With 3x3 I would probably do an L Shaped setup, with the shelves along the back of the closet deep enough to hold towels and sheets (14 or 16"), and 12 inches on the left or right, so you have about 2 feet inside the L for access. If you want to keep the floor open, rather than a built in hamper I would start the shelves high enough off the floor to hold several laundry baskets. With a door you need to make sure you have enough clearance to go 12 inches off the ceiling (with 3 foot depth it should be ok.)

Pull outs get tricky with our style closet doors. You end up wasting a lot of space on each side for clearance. And other than storing comforters and pillows, deeper shelves tend to mean too much stuff gets stuck in the back.

For first aid stuff, I like to put small plastic drawer units on the shelves to store smaller items. I also use a lot of small plastic baskets which are easy to toss In the sink to wash.

Slight thread drift but related, so please forgive me: How many changes of sheet sets for each bed do you own? Do you have extras, different colors, etc or do you strip the bed, wash the sheets you just took off and then make the bed once they are dry? OR….. do you take a second set from the linen closet and make up the bed right away, washing & drying whenever is convenient and then putting that set of sheets back into linen closet to be used in the next changing of the bed linens?
I'm downsizing my number of linens and I have this hangup about not having sufficient sheets for each bed, an overflow of guests (my grown kids) sleeping on the sofa, etc. needing another whole set… so where do I draw the line and say, ok, enough sheets?
Don't even let me get started on extra pillow cases, pillows and quilts!

@pmartinezv- I need to redo my master bath soon and totally want the built-in hamper like you have. A few questions: does it pull out or tilt out to open? Is there a laundry basket or other type of item (bag) to catch the dirty laundry or do you pull it all out and put it in a hamper to transfer to laundry room? Are there dividers in it for dark/white/delicate? Can you post a pic with it open? Thx.

melandmike said:

@pmartinezv- I need to redo my master bath soon and totally want the built-in hamper like you have. A few questions: does it pull out or tilt out to open? Is there a laundry basket or other type of item (bag) to catch the dirty laundry or do you pull it all out and put it in a hamper to transfer to laundry room? Are there dividers in it for dark/white/delicate? Can you post a pic with it open? Thx.

@melandmike, it opens out like a draw. I do not use a basket or bag in it. I just transfer the clothes to a basket to take downstairs to the laundry room. The space in our master bath is very limited so we kept the hamper small. It does not have any dividers either. If you have the space you could probably either set up different draws for this purpose or have a large one that you can divide. JV Woodworking were great to work with and they could probably accommodate your requests. I do the sorting in the laundry room where I keep different hampers for each color, so this set up works. Plus since the baby's clothes go in a hamper in his room, I still need to sort those.

critterlover said:

Slight thread drift but related, so please forgive me: How many changes of sheet sets for each bed do you own? Do you have extras, different colors, etc or do you strip the bed, wash the sheets you just took off and then make the bed once they are dry? OR….. do you take a second set from the linen closet and make up the bed right away, washing & drying whenever is convenient and then putting that set of sheets back into linen closet to be used in the next changing of the bed linens?
I'm downsizing my number of linens and I have this hangup about not having sufficient sheets for each bed, an overflow of guests (my grown kids) sleeping on the sofa, etc. needing another whole set… so where do I draw the line and say, ok, enough sheets?
Don't even let me get started on extra pillow cases, pillows and quilts!

LOL... I have many sheet sets. Probably 10+ for our master bedroom. The guest bedroom has its own (5+) since I color coordinate them. However, in most cases, and mostly out of laziness I do take the sheets out on Saturday morning while doing the cleaning, do the laundry and put them back in the late afternoon just to avoid having to fold the just washed sheets. Sometimes I do get another set if I have not finished the laundry or if I am changing the duvet cover etc, or if they starting to get dingy. I often find myself looking at sheets at department stores and I have to remind myself that they will end up not being used.

shh said:

Pull outs get tricky with our style closet doors. You end up wasting a lot of space on each side for clearance. And other than storing comforters and pillows, deeper shelves tend to mean too much stuff gets stuck in the back.

This is a really good point.

^ Yes, it is a good point.

Regarding sheet sets, I used to have WAY more than I have now. I realized I didn't need nearly so many, so now I have three sets for summer and three for winter, rotating between the master bedroom and the guest bedroom. That way I can always have one set on each bed and one in the wash, whatever the season. And these days I go mostly white with the sheets, or SUPER neutral, so I don't have to wonder whether it will go with the duvet covers, blankets, and so on.

I am trying to reach John of JV Woodworking. The number I have is not connected and the email I sent bounced. Let me know if you have contact information for him. Thanks.
Bill

What number did you try? I think it was (973) 728-6200.