Organize your entryway

There is something about the change in seasons that makes me want to start a project. Here in Minnesota, we have about a week of spring, a month of summer, a week of fall, and ten months of winter. The amount of coats, boots, mittens, hats, sneakers, sandals, and soccer shoes is ridiculous. Also, my entryway doubles (or shall I say quadruples) as a family room/living room/play room/entryway. I needed to organize.

First I started with some regular coat hooks and some wire shelves. The kids could hang up their coats and backpacks, put their shoes on the shelves, and the house would be fine. What a stupid plan that was. Here's a picture to prove it, and this picture is on a day where stuff was semi put away.

Forget this. I needed an actual plan. So I searched the web and found a few ideas that would work perfectly but were super expensive.  I was looking for a "school locker" design.

These are great and I found them at Walmart but they were way out of my price range.  For that bench with cubbies, it was almost $200 and the locker was over $300.  Plus, it didn't have the space for everyone in our family.  Back to the drawing board...

I knew I needed a cubby like the stuff they had at school.  I also needed heavy duty hooks and more room.  As you can see, there wasn't nearly enough room for more than one pair of boots and those wire racks were just not made for holding big wet winter boots.

Finally it came to me.  The cubbies would be one of those square bookshelf units.  I waited until Target had them on sale and got one for $40 (since I didn't have the tools, I knew making one of these myself was not an option).  I lined the bottom of each cube with contact paper to protect the wood from muddy boots.

Now for the coats and backpacks.  I bought a pegboard about 3 feet high, 5 feet wide.  I painted it dark brown to match the bookshelf and then bought some hooks to put in the pegboard.  These hooks are sold right next to the pegboards at the hardware store and I made sure I bought both small and large hooks.  The hooks cost me about $1.50 a pack, each pack gave me about six hooks.  The paint was around $3.00 and the pegboard about $5.00.  I hung the pegboard on the wall using those magic Hercules hooks and the bookshelf provided more support for the heavy school bags and winter coats.  All together, it cost me about $60 to put together a space-saving kid-friendly storage unit for my entryway.

Looking at it now, if I had a few extra bucks, I could have added some crown molding to the edges of the pegboard or reinforced it and added a shelf on top but for the time and money I had budgeted that weekend, I think it turned out alright.

Have an idea? Share it here by posting a comment below. Let's all help each other out.