Keep Your Table Linens Organized

2 Materials
I am a collector of linens; a habit started by my grandmother and reinforced by my mom. I grew up in a paperless kitchen and have carried that philosophy into my own kitchen.
As such, I am always on the lookout for lovely cloth napkins, tablecloths and dish towels and have accumulated quite an assortment of all of them.

I have tablecloths that my grandmother embroidered and tablecloths that my mom purchased for me on her travels overseas.

I have napkins that I purchase on my travels, napkins I made and napkins that were gifted to me.

But all these beautiful linens have been stuffed in drawers and lodged in cabinets resulting in a wrinkled hodgepodge of napkins and tablecloths.

I was always searching to find a complete set of napkins and then when I ultimately tracked down as many as I needed, they would always require ironing. I never knew what tablecloths fit what table, so would have to 'try' them on until I found the right one and then those would need ironing as well.
I employed the KonMari methods of taking all the linens out of the cabinet to examine them for their condition and to decide if they were something I still wanted to use. One of the key elements of KonMari is deciding if an item still brings you joy.
I did discard a couple of dated runners and repaired a small tear in one of the tablecloths in the process. 
It occurred to me during this process that my tablecloths would fare better and I would probably not need to iron them every time I wanted to use them if I hung them up instead of keeping them folded in the drawers. Plus that would clear up tons of space in my drawers for my burgeoning napkin collection.
 
I measured each of my tablecloths and runners and I labelled them so that now I know exactly what I have. 


I folded a piece of 5" by 8" cardstock in half, cut a half-oval where the fold was and wrote the description of the tablecloth and the dimensions on both sides of the card.
I had some heavy duty wire hangers with cardboard tubes from when the dry cleaners. I slipped the label I made over the hook of the hanger and glued the tag together.


Once all my tablecloths were sorted, organized and labelled I was able to enjoy the process of hanging them up.
Don' t you just love these organized tablecloths!?
And with my tablecloths hanging up in their own space, now my napkins can be easily organized and accessed.
Suggested materials:
  • Hangers
  • Cardstock
Lynn @ Nourish and Nestle
Want more details about this and other DIY projects? Check out my blog post!
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4 of 8 comments
  • Brenda  S. Brenda S. on Feb 23, 2017
    This is awesome! Also I love the print on those tableclothes :)
  • Marj MRC Creations Marj MRC Creations on Feb 24, 2017
    Smart, smart, smart! I wish I had closet space somewhere that I could use this great storage idea for all my tablecloths. I have so many and no clue what fits where!
    • Thanks Marj. It really doesn't take up much room in my closet. I have 16 tablecloths or runners hanging and it takes a total of 15 inches. Hopefully you can squeeze them in somewhere.
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