Martha Stewart has a clever formula for organizing her linen closet – it involves cardboard rolls and lavender sachets for under $9

The lifestyle expert gives us some expert advice on folding towels, keeping linens organized and making your closet smell fresh and clean

Martha Stewart
(Image credit: Peter Yang/ABC via Getty Images)

Organizing a linen closet can be an endless project. Towels and sheets can easily become mixed up, and piles of neatly folded dinner napkins can go awry (we have all been there).

Leave it to Martha Stewart to give us some helpful tips on how to organize a linen closet, with wisdom and simple steps that are easy to follow. Those tips stem from an old clip found on the treasure trove that is the Martha Moments Instagram account, they are just as applicable today.

'I think I first started dreaming about having a real, organized linen closet when I was a young girl in Nutley, New Jersey, babysitting for a very nice couple on Elm Place,' Stewart explains of her affinity for organizing linens. 'They had the nicest house on the street, and the woman was very organized. She had the most beautiful cupboards, all down the long hall, and in the cupboards were all her neatly folded sheets and towels, dinner napkins, tablecloths, and I thought then,' Wow, what a great idea. Maybe someday I'll be that organized.

She continues, 'It's hard to be organized like that, but I think finally, in this nice room that's devoted to storage, I have a place where I can organize all those linens that I need on a daily basis.'

Stewart gives a great tip for table linens, which are notoriously difficult to keep neat and tidy in the closet due to their size.

'It's awful hard to find a spot where you can keep great big squares of linen, the napkins, in an organized fashion,' Stewart says in the video. 'This is finally how I've solved the problem: take a roll of cardboard, and just roll your napkins around the cardboard. Then, I cover the roll, leaving the ends open for air, with clear cellophane. I have several rolls of different widths of cellophane, and this works so well. Then I just keep them right on the shelves, and all the napkins are kept just that way.'

With towels, Stewart recommends a simple technique of folding and stacking them in piles.

'As far as bath towels and all the towels for the bathroom, I keep them folded all the same way so that they hang very easily over the towel bars, and they look good,' she says. 'They're folded in thirds and then in half, and in half again. I just keep these on the shelves, organized according to size and color. Everything has its place now, every washcloth and every hand towel.'

Finally, she suggests keeping a linen closet smelling as good as it looks with the help of a dried flower.

'To keep everything really fresh, some homemade sachets made out of little handkerchiefs. Just tuck them in on the shelves. Lavender, really fresh and lovely.'


Hannah Ziegler
News Editor

Hannah is Homes & Gardens’ News Editor, with a focus on celebrity style and entertainment content. She got her start in media as a digital editorial assistant at ELLE Canada, and has since written about lifestyle and culture for publications such as Nylon and i-D.

Her love of film is rivalled only by one with a great soundtrack, and she hopes to someday decorate a Nancy Meyers-worthy kitchen.