The Linen Closet

My linen closet is a disaster.  Towels are shoved in, bottles of shampoo are tipped over, there are a large number of outdated nail polish jars teetering on the edge of the shelf.  And don't get me started on the various medicine bottles. For an area that was originally intended for sheets and towels, there's an awful lot of other junk in there.  It's a mess.  If you don't believe me, take a look at this.

Messy Linen Closet

It's been like this for quite some time and I've just worked around the mess by quickly shoving towels in and slamming the door shut before something else got pushed out.  But for some reason, last night was as long as I could take it.  Maybe it's due to a growing sense of a complete lack of control over anything in my life, but while my three kids were in the bathroom brushing their teeth before bed I decided that it was the perfect time to empty out the first two shelves of the linen closet and reorganize.  I mean, how bad could the top two shelves really be?  It's not like I really use them.  What could possibly be up there?

The medicines are particularly jumbled... and expired.

 

Top Two Shelves, Before Picture

What could possibly be up there?  Aside from the basics, (band-aids, cotton balls, Q-Tips, and expired medicines) here's what:

• At least a dozen of those plastic bags with zippers that sheets, blankets and comforters come in.  I had a vision of making all sorts of crocheted blankets and keeping them fresh and clean in these bags.  Surprise, surprise, this never happened.  Just another one of my bag issues.
• A Homedics back massager, which looks like some sort of heavy duty torture device.  Mike remembers using it at our apartment before we had kids.  I don't know.  It's really heavy.  Maybe I'll keep it handy to fight off intruders.
• Some sort of gigantic Conair machine that is supposed to turn your bathtub into a relaxing Jacuzzi.  Now this I remember using... once.  It didn't attach to the tub correctly and ended up falling in and nearly breaking my leg. 
• Breast pads from when I had my daughter in 2003.  Why I felt I might need to save these, I have no idea.
• Tiny little soaps and shampoos from Disney World.  The last time we went to Disney was our honeymoon ten years ago.  I don't think I can bring myself to toss out anything with those ears on it.
• A full bottle of Nair for Men.  ??? 
• Three different brands of nearly full tooth whitening systems.  Apparently I have often wished for whiter looking teeth, but can't be bothered with those messy strips.  That must be when I moved on to whitening toothpaste.
• A lint roller.  Just the roller.  No tape.  So really, some sort of weird, inefficient whisk type device.
• Four packages of opened razors.
• Three different sized baby aspirators.  Or, as I refer to them, Boogie Snatchers.
• A gallon jug of shampoo.  No conditioner in sight. 
• Three huge boxes of tampons.  That should last me a while.
• Some sort of plastic ring with suction cups.  We couldn't quite remember what it's function was but it had something to do with the bathtub.
• 29 bottles of nail polish.

Discovering these items right before bedtime was a bad idea.  As soon as the tooth brushing was over I was bombarded with questions of "What's this? What's this thing do? Why do you have this?"  My response was the same for all three questions; "I have no idea." 

The worst thing I found was a box of Crayola Soap Scribblers.  It's soap shaped like crayons.  The idea is that the kids can color themselves and the tub walls and it will all wash off, lickety split, because after all, it's just soap... right?  WRONG!  It comes off of the kids okay, but there is about 45 minutes of scrubbing before you can get it off the walls, the tub, the shower curtain, and the floor.  I remember having something similar when I was a kid.  I would always beg my mom to let me use it and she never would.  I couldn't understand it at the time, but I get it now.  Sorry Mom.

Once I got everything off of the top two shelves I had to decide what to do with it all.  I threw enough junk out to fill a full sized Hefty bag, including a whole bunch of expired medicine.  I know, there's something else that I'm supposed to do with expired medicine, but quite frankly I don't have time to try and figure out where to drop them off.  So all the junkies can come raid my trash can.  At least I didn't flush them (which is a whole other blog.  I don't know what's more disturbing, that flushed medicine ends up in our drinking water or that what we FLUSH ends up with the drinking water!  Just another reason for me to drink bottled water, I guess.)

Anyhow, I managed to get the top two shelves put back together in a more organized way.

Top Two Shelves, After

I was hoping it would look a lot different.  Only four more shelves to go.