How to Organize an Entryway Closet | Easy & Functional

 Today I’m excited to talk about how to organize an entryway closet using some creative and budget-friendly tips that helped create peace in our home.

“How precious a thing is the human family. Is it not worth some sacrifice in time, energy, safety, discomfort, work? Does anything come forth without work?”
-Edith Schaeffer, What is a Family?

Organizing closets and drawers is not glamorous work.

In fact, at my house often it’s downright gross.

But, it’s work that my family deserves.

You can watch me get organized in the living room, kitchen and mudroom HERE

Before

Before we decided to organize an entryway closet, it was a mess.

To say I’m embarrassed is an understatement.

Honestly I think the main reason this closet was such a disaster was because it is used by the girls more than me.

So I didn’t see behind this door unless I was grabbing a board game for the girls.

And even then, they usually grabbed the board games by pulling up a chair to stand on.

After

But I’m in this closet enough to know that it’s chaos.

Some days the chaos is so bad that the door can’t close.

So while my husband was home between Christmas and New Years we decided to change the way this closet is organized.

Entryway Closet Ideas | How to Organize Entryway Closet

Decide the purpose of the entryway closet/Planning

This is the most important step in organizing an entryway closet.

Well, any closet for that matter.

They aren’t used the same by everyone.

Some people store coats, games, and sweepers, and others prefer to store batteries, light bulbs, winter gear, shoes, and purses.

The way our house is set up we rarely use the front door when we leave the house.

Not that we never use it, but probably only 20% of the time we leave the house do we go out the front door.

The back door has a large closet right before you step into the garage.

This is the closet that gets the most traffic.

This is where we store our everyday coats, shoes, milking supplies, etc.

We decided to store board games, batteries, light bulbs, extra homeschool books, and the sweeper in the entryway closet/living room closet.

It makes more sense for the way our home functions.

My greatest piece of advice is to think about and analyze the way the closets in your house function before you start.

Organize an entryway closet by adding shelves

Since this closet will be used for things that needs stored on shelves more than things that need to be on a hanger we added shelves.

I’m not sure if you can tell from the pictures, but this closet is actually large for an entryway closet.

The closet is very long.

But a lot of that space was wasted because it was designed to function like a typical closet with a rod and one shelf above it.

It was a major pain trying to pull games off the shelf that were on one side or the other.

Unless it was right in front of me I battled to get it down.

The other thing I wanted to do was move the batteries and light bulbs storage from the mudroom area and put them in this closet.

The best way to achieve all of these things was to add shelves.

But not the “conventional way”.

This design for the closet landed my husband and me in a little dispute.

It was such an odd idea that he just couldn’t see how it could be functional.

With these entryway closet organization ideas, you must step into the closet to grab things off the shelves.

By the end, he trusted my idea and removed the one long shelf and installed four shelves from floor to ceiling on the right side of the closet.

Organize entryway closet by adding hooks or coat rack

When we discussed the floor-to-ceiling shelves on the right side of the closet, we decided we still wanted to have space to hang guests’ coats here, too.

So we took the long coat rack that was here and cut it shorter.

Then we installed it in the closet from front to back instead of from side to side like it used to be.

The size of our closet means we will have plenty of room for guests’ coats and for our coats that aren’t used regularly.

Utilize baskets

In this closet we are storing a bunch of different things.

The easiest way to keep all those items organized is with baskets.

A basket for all the batteries, another for the lightbulbs and so on and so forth.

Now each basket will likely become unorganized over time with usage.

But an unorganized basket is a lot less chaotic than things falling off of shelves.

Organize an entryway closet by adding wall mounted rack for mop and broom

At this point in the closet renovation we thought we were done.

But we realized there was so much space left in the closet that wasn’t being utilized.

So we decided to move the sweeper, mop and broom to this closet.

In the closet we were storing these items in, the broom was forever falling over.

Not to mention, we just purchased a device for removing pet hair from our rugs.

So we bought a wall mounted rack for these items.

Organize an entryway closet by Adding a step stool for hard to reach places

To this day the girls are in this closet more than my husband and I.

I’m not even joking, as I type this my oldest daughter is opening the closet door haha!

So to make these closet shelves easier for them to use, we added a step stool.

They have enough autonomy to grab the things that are “theirs” but aren’t tall enough to grab the things that aren’t.

This is a function of the design.

I can’t overstate how important the planning phase is.

Organize an entryway closet by considering the back of the door for storage

I say this, but I haven’t done it.

Honestly, it never occured to me to utilize the back of the door until just now.

I thought even though I don’t have any pictures to share with you as an example I would share the idea.

I do have two baskets that I used in the office space at the old house.

Maybe I’ll install those on the back of the door.

Entryway Closet Ideas | Get creative

Don’t be afraid to get creative.

Could we have spent the money on a closet system for this closet?

Yes.

But by getting creative on a budget we were able to create a closet that works great for us.

We turned one large oddly shaped closet into two closet spaces with two different designs/functions.

It feels so good not to have the girls snow gear spilling out of the closet into the living room.

Organize an entryway closet by decluttering

The last entryway closet organization ideas that I have is to declutter.

In the video I shared this week you can see that it had been a while since the last time I went through all our games.

There were games that we had never even played sitting on that shelf.

It feels so good to get rid of things that are not serving us any more.

It frees up physical space and clutter, and it also frees up mental space and creates peace having less chaos.

More Organization Inspiration

Kitchen Storage | Pot Rack

Kitchen Storage | Peg Rail

Shared Kids Closet

Organize Holiday Decor

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Have a great week! XoXo

Open Your Doors,
Aliya

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