Our entry room has always been a constant battle for me to keep clean. When I originally analyzed our house I realized that even though we have a coat closet right on the other side of the wall, we don't use it. When we come in, we take off our shoes and drop our coats on the floor. I brought this to Kevin's attention, and he decided to make some coat hooks to put in the room so that we can just hang our coats right where we take our shoes off instead of dropping them on the floor. The wall transformed from this:
To this:
One big thing that she stressed in her book was to have a 'going out' system. I've been really bad at this until now. I would stack some things on the counter, some things on the floor in this room, some things in the car, somethings in the garage. And then when we were going to the place I needed to bring the stuff, I forgot it. I decided to turn the built in bookshelf into my out going station. It doesn't really matter if it looks a little messy because nothing really stays there for long. Plus when you first come into the house from the garage or the front door, you don't see this wall at all so the visual appearance is neat. Now when I need to get something back to someone, I can just scan the shelves as I'm putting my shoes on and grab whatever I need to bring.
The other thing that this room needed was some furniture. We just recently inherited a shelf type thing with drawers. I am so pumped to have this in our entry room. I can put the girls' shoes in one drawer, winter hats/gloves/scarves in one for winter time, canvas shopping bags in another one, and the last one I still have to decide on. Kevin also brought up a chair from our basement and put it out there. That has been awesome.
Kevin had plans to build a small corner shelf to be the drop spot for his wallet and sunglasses. He has wasted more time looking for those items than we could probably count, so a nice little spot by the door will be perfect. His brother recently moved out of state and asked if we wanted the two shelf corner shelf that he had made. Um, yes please! The wood was unfinished so we were able to stain it to match the coat rack, and it's been awesome already.
Eventually we're planning to remodel this room into a mudroom and add a first floor laundry onto the bathroom. That will give this room a unique shape, but will also be more adequately suited to be an entryway for a family with small children.
This makes so much sense to have a place to hang coats as you go in and out of the house. You really make the space work for you. I like the drawer shelves for storing things. Grandma's chair looks right at home.
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