Close to the top of the wish list for many house-hunters is a mudroom — those special, magical places where dirty outdoor gear is welcome to live in peace, and organization is easy to achieve.
You know, those blissful “unicorns” of family living.
I absolutely love my home — even though it came with neither a mudroom, nor a reasonable way to add one on. Instead of mourning what my house did not have, I got creative with what it did have so I could still keep my house clean.
I have two school-age kids who are on the go…a lot. This also means that they accumulate a lot of stuff. So, I wanted to create a space near the door that made it easy for them to keep all of their school-, sports– and various music lesson-related stuff contained and organized as they run in and out 10 times a day.
By sniffing around the home decor, office supply and furniture sections of some local stores, I came up with several ideas for mudroom hacks that help my family transition smoothly between home and the outside world.
Use Familiar Furniture in a New Way
Among the four of us, we have a lot of shoes that we use regularly enough to want to keep close by. To maintain order, I picked up two streamlined media centers with double doors and hidden shelves.
Each member of the family can tuck away shoes on our own shelf, and no one has to see a heaping pile of boots, cleats, sandals and sneakers. A short traditional shoe rack sits beside the media centers, ready to catch the drippy or muddy footwear of the day that needs to air out over a heating vent before being put away properly.
Dedicate a Shelf to School Supplies
Another perk of using the media centers in the entryway? It gives you an open-access shelf for keeping the kids’ school supplies close at hand, but still out of the way. Library books live here, as do any textbooks that need to stay at home.
Also, each kid has a bright orange supply tray that holds their own pens, pencils, erasers, dictionary and ruler. They simply drop their daily homework inside, carry the tray to the kitchen table and get to it. When they’re done, they carry it all back to the assigned shelf and put their completed homework back in their bag, which is hanging right there. Nothing is misplaced.
Think About Hook Placement
Yes, your eyes are not deceiving you: there is a closet right in the hallway.
But, when my kids were little, it was easier for them to manage a hook than a hanger. For this reason, I bought two long strips of hooks to hang on the back of our laundry room door.
The top level is for the grown-ups; the bottom level is for the kids.
Since the hooks are kid-height, backpacks go right onto one set of hooks and coats can go right onto the other. Then the kids’ backpacks are at just the right spot for them to dig through to remove homework, lunch boxes and the like.
Not only that, but these hooks are located exactly opposite from where the kids remove their shoes, so they can take care of removing all their gear in one spot — decreasing the chance of losing things they need every day.
And if the weather changes? All of their other coats are stored in the big closet within arm’s reach. BOOM.
Give the Parents an “In Box”
Kids love distributing mail, so I picked up two mail organizers (one per kid) just for them.
Any paperwork that needs to be reviewed, notes from teachers, order forms or the like pop out of their backpacks and into our in-boxes. No more papers floating around messy counters!
Give the Kids an “Out Box”
Completed assignments, homework, projects and class party bric-a-brac can pile up. Most of it you’ll eventually toss out, but it’s a good idea to go through it before blindly dumping it all … when you have time.
For this reason, I gave each kid a large hanging file folder bin (empty of files) next to our in-boxes.
These hanging file folder bins become the “out box” for their backpacks!
Use Pretty Baskets to Make Messy Collections Look Nicer
The little on-the-go supplies the kids need can end up all over the house, so we keep them in a basket on the shelf by the door. Tissue packs, hand wipes, sunglasses, activity books, crayons, flashlights, travel games for long car rides, mini sunscreen sticks and the like stay close at hand, but — once again — out of sight.
On the floor sits a bright, lightweight basket full of the scarves, hats and gloves that the kids use regularly. Its placement makes it easy for the kids to grab any needed items as they run past, and just as easy to dump them all into the washing machine on laundry day.
By setting up our entryway like this, I created a one-stop shop for everything the family needs to get in and out of the house in a streamlined manner, whether for school, sports or fun. It’s made my kids more independent, helped them on their quest to becoming more organized, saves us all time on school mornings, makes homework time a lot easier and keeps the mess of outdoor gear from traveling into our home. In my book that’s a win for all!
Kim Bongiorno is the freelance writer and author behind Let Me Start by Saying . She adores her charmingly loud family, who she pretends to listen to while playing on Facebook and Twitter . If she were less tired, she’d add something super clever to her bio so you’d never forget this moment.
