Closets, Closets & Closets | Drift Off with Cozy, Meandering Talk

Looking for a sleep podcast to fall asleep fast, reduce anxiety, and quiet an overactive mind? This calming episode of The Insomnia Project is designed for insomnia relief, stress reduction, and gentle nighttime unwinding through slow, soothing conversation.
Marco Timpano and Nidhi Khanna explore closets, storage spaces, and the small details of home organization in a relaxed, low-stimulation discussion perfect for bedtime listening. From how closets are arranged to the everyday items we tuck away, this episode transforms a simple, familiar topic into a cozy and meditative listening experience.
As the conversation gently wanders through organization habits, clutter, and personal space, it embraces the meandering style that helps ease racing thoughts and promote relaxation. With soft-spoken storytelling and unhurried pacing, this calming podcast episode creates a peaceful environment ideal for sleep, stress relief, or quiet background listening.
Whether you’re searching for a sleep podcast for insomnia, calming background noise while you work, or a gentle way to unwind at the end of the day, The Insomnia Project offers a comforting, reliable escape.

​Closets, Closets & Closets
(Original airdate: June 12, 2016)

Welcome to Listenandsleep. com's Insomnia Project

Marco:  Welcome to the Insomnia Project. Sit back, relax, feel comfortable, and listen as we take you onto our little journey of a mundane conversation that we like to call the Insomnia Project. We can promise you that our conversation will veer left and right and take you down a road that you wouldn't necessarily travel down. But that road is meant for you to feel free to drift off. Thank you for joining us. We hope you do listen and sleep, and we do hope you follow us. Listenandsleep. I'm your host, Marco Timpano.

Nidhi:  And I'm, um, your co host, Nidhi Khanna.


Nidhi: Marco says he is going to tackle his linen closet

Marco:  Nidhi, I am going to tackle my linen closet.

Nidhi:  Marco, when you say tackle your linen closet now, does that mean that your closet has too many linens in it? Is it just overall disorganized or what? What is the issue with the linen closet?

Marco:  Well, the linen closet that we currently have is a little bit overrun.

Nidhi:  Okay.

Marco:  Because our linen closet houses our towels. Linens as well as we keep toilet paper in there. And it's just stocked up and.

Nidhi:  No, no, Marco.

Marco:  And it's, uh, it needs to be overhauled a bit. And the, um, boards that are in there that act as shelves are kind of bowing. So I've made it my mission to revamp, overhaul, and just make a great linen closet. What's your linen closet like?

Nidhi:  My linen closet is pretty organized.

Marco:  Okay.

Nidhi:  Um, there's not that much linen overrunning the entire. So it's not disorganized. It's got very specific shelves.

Marco:  Okay.

Nidhi:  I do have the bottom shelf, which is the one that's on the floor. Essentially. That one is the area of sort of the black hole where you can kind of stuff everything that doesn't really have a place anywhere else into that.

Marco:  Sure.

Nidhi:  But the towels need to be together, linens need to be together, the sheets need to be together.

Marco:  So

Nidhi:  it doesn't need an overhauling. I have a pretty good System going. Going there. What needs overhauling is my wardrobe closet.

Marco:  Well, before we get to the wardrobe closet.

Nidhi:  Sure.


Nidhi wants to get a good system for the linen closet

Marco:  What is your linen system? Because I'm curious to know that for my own linen system.

Nidhi:  So towels and hand towels are together, but in separate piles.

Marco:  Okay.

Nidhi:  Right. So.

Marco:  So. So your bath towels would be one on top of each other. Is that correct?

Nidhi:  Yes.

Marco:  And then your hand towels would be next to the bath towels, stacked one on top of the other.

Nidhi:  Correct.

Marco:  And then what about your face cloths?

Nidhi:  Those are in a separate pile.

Marco:  Oh, I see.

Nidhi:  Or they can be on top of the hand towels, depending on the configuration of your linen closet.

Marco:  Now, do you have different color towels? Do you have all. See, we have towels that are blue that are meant for the upstairs bathroom, and then gray towels and white towels. That's the majority of our towel colors.

Nidhi:  I have various different towel colors. Different sets can go in different bathrooms or different areas, depending. Usually each area has at least two sets that you build up. Right, sure. So that the laundry cycle works.

Marco:  Right, of course. Because you want to make sure that you have one while one's being washed. Etc. Seasonal sheets we have as well.

Nidhi:  What kind of seasonal sheets?

Marco:  We have like, um, Christmas. No, sorry, I, uh, didn't mean that, but I meant, like, flannel sheets when it's really cold.

Nidhi:  Oh, nice.

Marco:  And we have, um, just a lighter

Nidhi:  sheet for when it's warm.

Marco:  When it's warmer. We used to have, um, Jersey sheets, too.

Nidhi:  Oh, how was that?

Marco:  I didn't love them.

Nidhi:  No.

Marco:  No, I didn't love them. So I think we got rid of them. But I, um, think they were in fashion years ago. I mean, stuff made in a Jersey.

Nidhi:  Yeah.

Marco:  Cotton. But, um, no. So I want to get a good system for the linen closet, because I feel like the linen closet, unlike a wardrobe closet, doesn't get the respect that it deserves. I feel like it's kind of often. Oh, it's just the linen closet. Just throw in the linen closet. Or you grab the towels from the linen closet and they kind of clumsily fall on top of each other. You know how towels can be, right. They don't have a sort of crispness. They have a bulkiness. Same with sheets. Sheets can be a little bit because. Because the fitted sheet can often be hard to fold into a perfect, say, square or, um, rectangle. They can be a little bit, you know, gnarly in the closet. And I don't use the word gnarly very often.

Nidhi:  No, I think this is the first time that I've heard you use that Word.

Marco:  Actually, there you go. I also have a. You know how you have heavier blankets in the linen closet?

Nidhi:  You really put everything in the linen closet?

Marco:  Well, anything linen, like so sheets, towels, blankets.

Nidhi:  Does that fit into all one. Into one closet?

Marco:  Well, that, that There lies the problem, Nidhi, because our linen closet is long but not very deep. Uh, so it proves to be problematic in that sense.

Nidhi:  So are you hoping to alleviate the issues of your linen closet through simple reorganization or do you need to redistribute the closets or do you need to make the closet bigger and actually do an over physical overhaul of the closet?

Marco:  I think it's going to be a little bit of everything. So we're going to remove the closet doors that are kind of on wheels that don't really do anything special for the particular closet that we have. So we're going to put a barn door slider.

Nidhi:  Okay.

Marco:  Type thing. That's, that's the idea right now to put the barn door and slider so we can just slide the whole thing out and then put the linens the way they need to be put into that particular closet and then slide the barn door type roller door for the linen closet. The only problem that I face with that, and I don't know if you can speak to this, but I believe the rollers have to be on some sort of support system. So in other words like a tiny piece of a wall or like a, um, you know how uh, there's like a tiny sort of upper portion of a wall so you would adhere to there. I don't have that. Uh, so my closet, when you open it is just empty space. Uh, so I need to figure out how I would make that happen. Make it happen. Do I need to build a little box and put it to this, adhere it to the ceiling so that I can have a roll, a roll away. Barn door, linen closet door.

Nidhi:  This is a complex issue.

Marco:  That's why I said I have to tackle it. Right.

Nidhi:  It's not. You do have to tackle it.

Marco:  But you know, it's one of those things, once you've tackled something like a closet, something that's. I don't want to say benign, but it's something, something that is kind of there and easily neglected. Mhm. Once you tackle one of those items and you really work at it and make it efficient and to your specs and what you need, it's glorious. So in our spare room, I just redid the closet and I put wallpaper inside the closet that matches wallpaper that I have on one wall. Of that spare room. And then I put two very strong closet rods or closet, um, yeah, I guess you'd call them rods in there to house a lot of clothes that we have.


Your guests have a wonderful time using the closet in your spare room

And so as a result, the closet in the spare room is great. It's where I need it to be.

Nidhi:  So your guests who use that space spare room have a wonderful time using the closet.

Marco:  Without a doubt. And we have a few, um, dressers in there, or we have one dresser in there, I should say, which allows them to put their clothes in. In the dresser. And, you know, it's a great spare room.

Nidhi:  It's a beautiful square room.

Marco:  And I've wanted a good spare room for guests to have for a while. And we just recently attacked it.


What's your wardrobe closet like? I know you were about to speak on it

So now my next thing is the closet.

Nidhi:  Right.

Marco:  And in this case the linen closet. Because we've taken care of our wardrobe closet really well.

Nidhi:  Right.

Marco:  And that was, I think that was the impetus to get on all the closets was taking care of our wardrobe closet. What's your wardrobe closet like? I know you were about to speak on it and I said, no, hang on, let's stay in the linen closet.

Nidhi:  My wardrobe closet is too small.

Marco:  Okay.

Nidhi:  And as a result, I, I have different clothes in different areas in my apartment in different closets, which.

Marco:  So how many closets do you have in your place?

Nidhi:  Um, there's a few. There's a few.

Marco:  But they're all smaller.

Nidhi:  But they're all smaller. Okay. Uh, and I like having my wardrobe in one place.

Marco:  Right.

Nidhi:  Um, but I need to put some of my wardrobe in my front closet where my coats are.

Marco:  Sure.

Nidhi:  Because I don't have enough room in my wardrobe. So my ideal wardrobe closet would be a walk in closet where everything is laid out and I can see all the different shirts, all the different shoes, all the different accessories, all the different. Just everything is laid out and I can see it.

Marco:  Right.

Nidhi:  I don't like not being able to see everything.

Marco:  Now, when you, when you stack your shirt, for example, in your closet, how do you. I don't stack. Hang. Hang them. How do you hang them?

Nidhi:  So ideally I would like to hang everything if I could. If I could and I had the room, I would hang everything. But I can't. Um, but I hang. So I go. I have a system that goes from formal dresses.

Marco:  Okay.

Nidhi:  To work to casual dresses to work dresses.

Marco:  But formal being the first thing or the one towards the back.

Nidhi:  The formal is. Sorry. So I'm going left to right.

Marco:  Okay.

Nidhi:  So formal would be sort of the last most then casual. So casual summer Casual, short. Then work dresses, then work suits.

Marco:  Okay.

Nidhi:  Then work skirts. Sorry, Work suits, work skirts, work pants, and then dress shirts.

Marco:  Oh, I see.

Nidhi:  Or work shirts.

Marco:  And your shirts, your work shirts, are they organized by color or by type or.

Nidhi:  No, no.

Marco:  I would implore you to organize them in shades so that you go from.

Nidhi:  I would love to do that if I had the, um, space to.

Marco:  But how many shirts do you currently have hanging?

Nidhi:  Too many.

Marco:  Okay. So you've got too many shirts, but they're hanging right now. But they're not hanging in any particular gradient of color.

Nidhi:  No.

Marco:  So the ones you currently have hanging, even though you don't have a room, I would implore you to hang them in gradients of color. So they go from light to dark, from right to left. So the right most would be the lightest. Going all the way to your darkest shirts. I recently did. I recently did that.

Nidhi:  Um, but I need to see everything right now. Everything's so smushed together that it's all one big black jumbo. Jumbo. Because many of my clothes are black or darker colors.

Marco:  I see. I see.

Nidhi:  And then I don't even want to get started on the shirt. Shirts that I fold.

Marco:  Right.

Nidhi:  Because you take one shirt out of the folded pile.

Marco:  Right.

Nidhi:  And everything just topples.

Marco:  Well, have you read the book, uh, the Japanese Art of Tidying?

Nidhi:  No, I haven't.

Marco:  It's a book you should read, I think, because that helped me with my closet. And there's sort of tips. A lot of it has to do with how you fold your clothes.

Nidhi:  Okay.

Marco:  How you treat your clothing. So in other words, uh, does this shirt. Do I really like this shirt, or am I just holding on to it because it's a good work shirt or it's something someone gave me, or I bought it because I liked it in the store but never wore it.

Nidhi:  Sure.

Marco:  And if that's the case, if you have clothing like that, out it goes.

Nidhi:  Well, that's why I quite enjoy your wife's clothing.


A clothing swap is an opportunity to get rid of unwanted clothes

So swaps.

Marco:  Right. We should probably explain to listeners who are, uh, like, what's a clothing swap? What exactly A clothing swap is. Um, and they're run differently, but there's a sort of uniformness to what a clothing swap is. Everybody runs their own sort of clothing swap. Differently.

Nidhi:  Differently. And so it's an opportunity where, uh, a bunch of friends can get together and clean out their closets and everyone brings it to essential location.

Marco:  So you bring the clothes that you no longer want to. Let's say in this case, someone's home. Because it's happened in my home. Yes, A few times.

Nidhi:  Yes. And you lay out all the clothes. So for example, you might have one room, such as the guest room, where it's all accessories, and another room that's all shirts. Another, um, room where it's dresses and pants, etc. Bottoms. Uh, and then you literally go browsing around looking for something that. Something that catches your eye. Something that catches your eye, that works with you. Maybe something that you'd like to experiment. If you haven't tried a particular style before, a particular color, you can try it and take it home with you and, uh, enjoy it. So it's an opportunity for you shopping, but without having. But it's like a barter system.

Marco:  Right. And it's an opportunity for you to have someone's clothes that they've loved but no longer wear. And likewise bring new life to something, a piece that you've worn that you've always enjoyed.

Nidhi:  Absolutely.

Marco:  There you go. So that's a clothing swap in a nutshell. So you attend some of those and you acquire clothes and you get rid of some clothes that way as well.

Nidhi:  Exactly, exactly. Or even if there's things that you know, um, I'm not using this as much as I want to or used to, but it's still really good. So it's kind of nice to bring it to a clothing swap because someone else might be able to enjoy it, a friend of yours or something like that.

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Nidhi: I've been talking about our home quite a bit

Marco:  Now, do you have any favorite shirts or sweaters or clothes that when you wear them, you're like, I just feel comfortable in this. If I'm in a bad mood, I wear this.

Nidhi:  This. Yes.

Marco:  Article of going.

Nidhi:  For me, it's tights and a long shirt.

Marco:  Oh, really?

Nidhi:  Tights and long.

Marco:  Like, uh, Is there a particular set of tights or shirt. Long shirt that you love wearing or

Nidhi:  is it black tight? Yeah, I have. Yeah, I have a pair of black tights that I really enjoy.

Marco:  Okay.

Nidhi:  And then I have a few long, billowy, um, looser shirts that I'll wear with them that are just kind of my comfort shirts, my casual weekend comfort shirts.

Marco:  So in our closet, it's a bit of a walk in closet. We have. I feel like I've been talking about our home the last few episodes quite a bit. So forgive me if you. If you're tired of hearing of my particular home. But what we did was we had an old dresser.

Nidhi:  Okay.

Marco:  That I got at Ikea many years ago before I. I may have been in university when Ike got it. And so it was like this, like, grotto blue dresser. And when you open it up, the inside was kind of a seafoam green, if you can picture it. Okay. So a little bit out there, not your traditional wood. It's kind of got brightish colors. And it was in our basement. Um, and we were like, we're gonna just get rid of it because what are m we gonna do with this? Right. It seems like something a university student would have. But what I did was I put it at the back end of the walk in closet. So when you go into our walk in closet, if you were to open the door, you would see the dresser right in front of you. And it's a spot of blue that sort of, like, catches your eye in the closet, and it fits just perfectly in there. And inside that dresser, we have a lot of, um, T shirts and drinks shirts folded in the method of the Japanese art of tidying so that they're easy to sort of spot. And then I put, um, shelves above the dresser so that we had more storage space there. That's where we keep a, uh, lot of Amanda's purses, as well as, um, some of her dressier shoes or her fancier shoes.

Nidhi:  Sure.

Marco:  And a lot of her sort of brooches and costumey jewelry. Things just like that kind of. Kind of sit there. And you know what else I did, Nidhi? Um, this was years ago for Amanda. I, uh, saw it. I must have saw it in a magazine. But I took some cork board. So, you know, you can go to a office supply store and get a cork board that you would put, you know, memos and whatnot on. I took that and I bought some fabric. Fabric. I covered the cork with fabric, and then I put a frame around it. I didn't get a large cork board. Like, you know how some cork boards can be really huge for presentations and whatnot. And you can get some that are smaller. So the size of a, let's say, 13 by 12 mirror was the size of the corkboard. I got. I covered it with zoom, some fabric, some green fabric. And then I. I got a frame that fit around it, and I framed it. And then what I did was I put push pins in it. So I got a bunch of different colored push pins, and I put two push pins side by side in one color, dropped it down maybe an inch and a half, put another two pushpins in of a different color. And Amanda Higgs her earrings on that. And what's nice about the corkboard is you can move the push pins however you want, depending on the earrings and how they hang.

Nidhi:  Sure.

Marco:  Because, you know, some earrings dangle, some are shorter, some are, like, flouncy, and some. Yeah. So she has a dedicated area for. And you can even put one push pin and hang, let's say, a string of beads or whatnot, a necklace of some sort on that as well.

Nidhi:  Look at you. Aren't you crafty?

Marco:  I have my moments, you know.


So the other thing that I really enjoy about the closet is wallpaper

So the other thing that I really enjoy about the closet, and this might sound a little ridiculous, but if you can Wallpaper the inside of your closet. And it just has to be the wall that you see. It sounds silly. It sounds like really, I'm gonna take everything out to wallpaper.

Nidhi:  I think it's great.

Marco:  But because I had some spare wallpaper for the spare room and you know, you've got only so much and you're like, do I throw it out? What do I do? Do I keep it in case something should happen to the wallpaper? And then something hit me and I said, you know what? I'm gonna wallpaper the inside of the closet. And what's lovely about that is when you open the door or say, slide open your closet door and that little bounce of color, it kind of is the backdrop to your clothes and has a really kind of neat effect. And I didn't realize how much I would enjoy until I saw how much my wife enjoyed opening a closet. And it sort of gave the closet the atmosphere of a room itself.

Nidhi:  Right, right. Which I think is another

Marco:  ideal, uh,

Nidhi:  dream of mine would be to have sort of a closet that. That's more of a dressing space.

Marco:  I see.

Nidhi:  Uh, I would enjoy that to have little dressing place that has, you know, maybe some natural light.

Marco:  Right.

Nidhi:  Ah, where you could do your makeup and hair in the morning and where it's more of an atmosphere. I really enjoy those rooms that um. Or if you've ever been to like a high quality hotel or restaurant where they have sort of, ah, the bathrooms or the. Have lounge areas attached to it, you know, that's an ideal space for me. Like I, I find those, like.

Marco:  Have you ever seen interesting some of these shows where they go into the homes of the rich and famous and they've got these like. I wouldn't even call it a walk in closet. I'd call it like a uh, different room.

Nidhi:  Like it's a whole other house.

Marco:  Yeah. It's like a, a ballroom closet, let's say. And they have like a Shay lounge.

Nidhi:  Yeah.

Marco:  And they've got. I saw one where. So whenever you think of a walk in closet, generally you think it's commandeered by the women's clothing because there's so much more and there's so many different pieces that women have than men do in terms of the amount of clothes and what is needed for different functions you might need it for. Right. But I saw one where they divvied up. So the woman had her, her closet, her walk in closet designed the way she wanted it and the gentleman had his. And it was there that I got a bit of inspiration where it was like, every watch had its own little cubby hole. Every tie had its own little space. Um, there was a valet dresser where the man could lay his suit jacket on. There was a really comfortable, rounded couchy kind of thing where you could sit. And it just. And it had, I think it even had a little bar in there so you could like pour yourself a whiskey or something. And there's something about that space, that space that you're like, you know, it's. Once again, it's. It's not the featured space people look for in a home. It's not the bathroom, it's not the kitchen. It's not one of these rooms that are like the heartbeat of the house. But when you can make your closet functional in a space that you enjoy going to, I would predict that your clothes will be reflected in that so that it's not a jumble of black clothing like you said. So.

Nidhi:  Fair enough.

Marco:  We need to get some wallpaper in your closet.

Nidhi:  I know. I clearly, clearly I'm missing out.


What about mirrors in your closet? Like, we had one that I adhere to

Marco:  What about mirrors in your closet? Like, we had one that I adhere to. Do you know how you have full length mirror?

Nidhi:  Yes.

Marco:  And if you kind of just hang it on your. The back of your closet door. So when you, if you were in the closet and you close it and there's the, the full length mirror, but you hang it like a picture frame the worst.

Nidhi:  Oh, yeah.

Marco:  Because it never securely sits there. It's always kind of like, I like

Nidhi:  the mirror in the frame, like on a, on a stand. Sorry.

Marco:  Sure.

Nidhi:  You have a full length mirror on a stand. That's great. Or just a full length mirror. Uh, you need a full length mirror, though. There has to be that in either the bedroom or the wardrobe space in some way, because you need it.

Marco:  You just need to be able to see yourself. You know what else I did, Niddy? And this is very simple that you could do in your closet.

Nidhi:  Okay.

Marco:  I went to a hardware store and I got a couple of sturdy hooks.

Nidhi:  Okay.

Marco:  And, um, for some strange reason, Niddy, I have a medicine cabinet in my walk in closet. I had this expensive medicine clamp that we redid our bathroom. We couldn't put the medicine cabinet back in the bathroom. I hated to see it go because I really like this medicine cabinet.

Nidhi:  Okay.

Marco:  And so I'm like, I'm just gonna hang it in the closet and we'll just have extra medicine that we don't use all the time in that closet. In the closet. In the medicine cabinet. So whatever. It's a little bit bizarre. But I'm gonna say charming nonetheless. Underneath that medicine cabinet, I put these different hooks. And what we do with those hooks is those hooks remain barren. But what Amanda does is she'll hang her clothes that she's gonna wear the next day, those hooks, so that she can pick and choose, put them on the hook, see what she wants to wear, see what works for her, and they're there, ready to go the next day. And, you know, you can get a simple hook, anchor it to your. To your wall, in your closet, or even just outside your closet if you don't have a large closet. And that's the hook that holds the clothes that you wear the next day.

Nidhi:  That is a wonderful life hack.

Nidhi:  Really.

Nidhi:  Well, look at you.

Marco:  Well, listen, you know, every once in a while, out of necessity, because part of the issue I had was Amanda would get up way earlier than I would, and I'd still be in bed, and she would be rifling through her clothes, getting things ready because she had to dress herself. She didn't want to disturb me. She didn't want to turn on the light, especially because she knows how precious sleep is to me. And so, uh, it became difficult for her, and she was trying to do everything in the small closet, but she said, now she does it the night before, and it's simple, perfect.

Nidhi:  Well, that definitely helps with the morning blues if you are not a morning person in particular.

Marco:  Fair enough.


If your listeners have a closet life hack or a closet tip, let us know

Nidhi, I think we exhausted just about everything you could talk about with regards to a closet on this particular, uh, episode. But if our listeners should have a closet life hack or a closet tip, I invite them to let us know and we'll mention it on the air. All you gotta do is tweet ustenandsleep or send us an email or go on our Facebook and just say, hey, listen to your closet episode, and here's what I have to say. Until next time, we hope your closet is never too full but easy to access.

Nidhi:  As always. The Insomnia Project is produced by dramacast Productions, and we were recording this particular episode in Toronto, Sa.