“The foundation of beauty is cleanliness, order, harmony and symmetry.”
–Beverly Pogue, The Homemaker’s Coach™
Go look at your linen closet. No, really. Go look at it. Is it beautiful? Never mind being “organized,” is it beautiful? When you look at it, do you feel pleased? For a quick moment could you almost imagine you were in a nice bed-and-breakfast or a spa?
Beauty–especially (I believe) for women–is a form of deep, self-care and ought to be experienced to some degree at least once each day…perhaps in the morning when you look at the sunrise, in the kitchen when you’re putting clean dishes away in the cupboard and, yes, even when you open your linen closet door. There’s no reason why the most practical spaces can’t also be pleasantly beautiful (and quite a few reasons why they should).
If you would like your linen closet to be pleasing to the eye, then here’s what you can do:
First…pretend. (Yes…pretend.) Put on The Professional’s Attitude by pretending you are an employee of a fancy bed-and-breakfast and the boss has asked you to merchandise the linen closet so that guests see a beautiful arrangement of towels, etc., every time they open the door.
Second, as you’re emptying, cleaning, and reorganizing the space, ask yourself the following questions:
- Is the entire surface of the closet clean? Clear to the edges? All the way up high and all the way down low into the farthest corners?
- Have you removed all the ragged or stained linens, etc., and set them aside to be put later into the rag bin?
- Are all the washcloths, hand towels and bath towels folded or rolled nicely and stacked neatly on the shelves? Have you done the same for the folded and fitted sheets, the pillowcases, etc?
- Have you put the linens used most often in the easiest-to-reach locations, nearer to the front, and on the most accessible shelves? Have you put the linens used the least in the less-accessible places up-high, down low or farther back?
- Remembering that you are not just creating order but also beauty, is there a harmony of colors over-all and a symmetry of arrangement? Are the stacks of towels neat and aligned? Do the colors look well together?
- And finally, when you stand back and look at the entire display, does it please you? Will your imaginary boss like it? Will your pretend guests say, “Wow!” and want to do the same thing to their linen closets at home?
Remember…We are never done organizing until we have made a space beautiful. Order is important, but the effects of beauty can go far beyond what order can do. Order makes a stable place from which we can create. Beauty feeds the soul.
