Postpartum Naptime Projects: My Small Linen Closet Refresh

There’s something about entering a new season of life that suddenly makes you look around your house and think, Why have I been living like this?

For me, that season is postpartum.

I’m embracing this slower season at home, settling into stay-at-home mom life, and realizing how much I want our home to work better for our family. I’m not talking about massive renovations or perfectly styled rooms. I’m talking about those small spaces that have been driving me crazy for years… the drawer you can barely close, the cabinet where everything falls out, or, in this case, the linen closet where I’ve been shoving things for the last five years.

So, I’m officially calling these little home refreshes my Postpartum Naptime Projects: small, manageable projects I can tackle during naptime or, realistically, over several naptimes that make our home feel a little more organized and functional.

First up: the linen closet.

The Linen Closet I Ignored for Five Years

When we built our house five years ago, this small linen closet was intended to hold all of our extra bedding: sheets, blankets, pillows, comforters, rugs, bathroom mats, and things like that.

We actually don’t keep our towels here because I prefer to store those in the bathrooms where we use them.

The problem? I never really took the time to create an actual system for everything else.

And it showed.

Sheets were folded (or kind of folded) and shoved onto shelves. Blankets were piled wherever they fit. There were random pillowcases, pillow shams, fitted sheets without their matching flat sheets, and things that somehow migrated into the closet even though they had absolutely no business being there.

It was a total cluster.

You know the kind of closet where you open the door, quickly grab what you need, and shut it again before the entire pile comes tumbling down?

That was basically what I was working with.

Why I’m Organizing My House Postpartum

This project was about more than making a closet look pretty.

One thing I’m realizing during this postpartum season is that an organized home is easier to run.

It’s kind of like cooking in a clean kitchen. Technically, you can make dinner when the counters are covered in stuff and the sink is full of dishes but everything feels harder.

I feel the same way about our house.

I’m taking care of a family, keeping everyone fed, doing laundry, managing schedules, cleaning, creating content, and doing all of the little invisible things that keep a household moving. When our home has systems in place, all of those things become just a little bit easier.

I don’t need my house to be perfect. I need it to function.

And right now, I’m slowly working my way through the spaces that aren’t functioning well and figuring out how to make them better.

Step One: Take EVERYTHING Out

I knew there was no way I could organize this closet by moving a few piles around.

Everything had to come out.

Every sheet.

Every blanket.

Every pillow.

Every rug.

Every random item I had apparently decided belonged in a linen closet at some point during the last five years.

Once the closet was completely empty, I could finally see what I actually had. I put away anything that didn’t belong there and started sorting the rest into categories.

The Great Sheet Matching Project

This was probably the most important part of the entire refresh. Before I could organize my sheets, I needed to know which pieces actually belonged together.

So I did all the laundry.

Sheets, blankets, pillowcases—everything.

Then I started matching sets.

King sheets together. Queen sheets together. Full sheets together. Pillowcases with their matching sheets. Shams with the bedding they belonged to.

And then there were the stragglers.

You know them.

The random fitted sheet whose flat sheet disappeared sometime around 2022.

The lone pillowcase that doesn’t match anything.

The mystery bedding you don’t even remember buying.

If it was a single Pringle, it went into the donation pile.

I wasn’t going to waste precious closet space storing random pieces of bedding I wasn’t actually using. This alone made a huge difference.

Covering the Wire Shelves

Once everything was out and sorted, I could finally focus on making the actual closet look better.

Our linen closet had basic wire shelving, and while it technically did the job, I never loved the way it looked or the way smaller items sat on it.

I found these wooden shelf covers on Amazon that fit right over the existing wire shelves. I’ll link the exact ones I used here so you can see them.

This might have been my favorite part of the entire project.

They instantly transformed the closet.

There was no ripping out shelving. No major DIY project. No construction.

I simply covered what was already there.

Suddenly this forgotten little closet looked warm, intentional, and—dare I say—expensive.

SHOP THE WOODEN SHELF COVERS HERE

The Linen Sheet Organizers That Changed Everything

Next came the actual organization.

I found these linen bedding organizers on Amazon, and they are exactly what this closet needed.

Instead of stacking sheet sets on top of each other and inevitably destroying the entire pile every time I needed the set on the bottom, each set now has its own designated space.

For our larger bedding, I was able to fit one king sheet set per organizer.

For the smaller bedding, I could fit two full or queen sets in an organizer, depending on the sheets.

I also created separate organizers for:

● Pillow shams

● Extra pillowcases

● Additional bedding pieces I wanted to keep together

Now I can open the closet and immediately see where everything is instead of digging through stacks of fitted sheets trying to remember which one fits which bed.

SHOP THE LINEN BEDDING ORGANIZERS HERE

Giving Everything a Home

Once the sheet sets were contained, the rest of the closet came together pretty quickly.

I dedicated one shelf to my Ruggables and bathroom mats. Keeping them folded together in one spot makes so much more sense than having them scattered around the house.

The top shelf is now home to our comforters, since those are bulkier items that we don’t need to reach for as often.

Then the everyday bedding and sheet organizers are kept where they’re easier to access.

That’s it.

Nothing revolutionary.

But every single thing now has a home.

And THAT is what makes the difference.

The Finished Linen Closet

I cannot explain how satisfying it is to open this closet now.

Everything is contained.

Everything matches.

I know exactly where things are.

Nothing comes tumbling out when I need a set of sheets.

And those wooden shelf covers made the entire space look so much more finished than it did before.

It almost doesn’t feel real.

Especially knowing that behind this beautifully organized closet door used to be five years’ worth of sheets and blankets basically shoved onto shelves wherever I could find room.

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You Don’t Have to Organize Your Entire House at Once

I think this is the mindset I’m bringing into this new season of homemaking.

I don’t need to wake up one morning and completely organize my entire house.

Because, first of all, I have kids.

That’s not happening.

Instead, I’m looking for small projects that make our everyday life easier.

One closet.

One cabinet.

One drawer.

One little corner of the house at a time.

Because when those small spaces start functioning better, the entire house starts feeling easier to manage.

And right now, that’s exactly what I need.

Welcome to Postpartum Naptime Projects

So, this is officially the beginning of my new series: Postpartum Naptime Projects.

I’m going to be sharing the little projects I’m tackling around our home as I embrace this postpartum, stay-at-home-mom season and figure out how to make our house work better for our family.

Some will be organization projects like this one. Some might be decorating. Some might be those little household projects I’ve been saying I’ll get to eventually for the last five years.

The goal isn’t perfection.

It’s creating a home that’s beautiful, comfortable, organized, and—most importantly—functional for the people who actually live here.

I’ll be sharing all of these projects here on the blog and over on Instagram at @491westmainst, so make sure you’re following along.

And if you have a closet, cabinet, drawer, or random corner of your house that you’ve been avoiding for years, maybe this is your sign to make it your next naptime project too.

Now excuse me while I go open my linen closet again just to admire it.