Jump Start January: Declutter Week: Day 4

If you spend a third of your life in bed, you might as well have nice bed linen. Today I’m sorting out the linen and towels store in my house. Here be monsters. Well, monstrosities anyway.

We were really lucky this Christmas when more than one relative gave us John Lewis vouchers. There were some great offers in their New Year sale so we decided to replace some of our old bath towels and sheets. So far, so good, but before we could put them away we really needed to ‘retire’ the old stuff – we’re short on storage space and only have a couple of drawers to keep it in. 

We only have two working drawers under our four-drawer divan, but you might have an airing cupboard or another, bigger store. It’s a spot where many of us find it hard to let go of things that are well past their prime, often telling ourselves that we might need something in case of an emergency. However, most of us only have so much room and eventually we all have to prioritise.

Here’s how the declutter goes:

• Clear everything out of the drawer or cupboard
• Clean and dry the shelf/drawer/cupboard, and add drawer liners if you like
• Sort through the linen and towels: keep the best (put it into the wash immediately if it’s musty); put one or two things aside for guests/emergencies/decorating but be strict about numbers; get anything hideously ugly but useable out of the house (charity donation or sell it), and get anything stained/ragged/threadbare into the recycling (it can be used for rags) or into the dustbin
• Re-fold the good stuff neatly and put it away
• Move the few less good items you’re keeping into their new homes on the same day
• Add an anti-moth sachet (optional)

In the end we kept a couple of extra towels for guests, one towel to go under a pet bed, and two towels for pet-related emergencies – these have been moved to their new storage spots straight away. A couple were still usable but could only really be described as monumentally fugly so they went to the charity shop, and the threadbare stuff went into the recycling and the bin.

We kept two sets of sheets for double beds in case of an emergency deluge of visitors, and moved these into another room. Stuff from the planet No Style At All which belonged to a previous resident has been ceremonially burned and exorcised binned. We already have a stack of old sheets in the shed for decorating, so there was no further excuse to keep the clutter around any longer. Bin bin bin.

Aaaaaand exhale.

If you’ve bought new linen this January, is it time to get rid of some of the old stuff too?