Tips for Organizing a Family Entryway Mudroom

As part of the Ten Week Organizing Challenge, I’m sharing tips for organizing a functional and efficient family entryway mudroom in your home.

One of the key things that I have always dreamed about is a big mudroom / family entryway in a home. In the past we have had small entryway or foyers that either 1) enter almost directly into our living space; 2) were basically a hallway with laundry facilities on one side and a coat closet on the other; 3) were tiny with nowhere near enough storage space for a family to function. When choosing the plan for this house a decent sized family entrance with a bench and storage was high on my priority list. Previously I shared an article about gorgeous, functional, and organized mudrooms, as well as a very practical article about setting up a mudroom in a small space. I have also shared an article about setting up a mudroom area in your garage!

Family Entryway

This house is a bit of a combination of the two; we have shoe storage in our garage, but the rest of our family entryway needs are met in the laundry/mudroom, which is the room we directly enter and exit from the house each day through the garage. Today I’m sharing the details about how I organized this room to be multi-functional for our family; it contains not only our mudroom and laundry room, but our family command center as well. I hope you can use these tips to create an organized entryway mudroom that functions well for your family.

 

Tips for an Organized Family Entry

If you are looking to setup a very small functional mudroom/entry space then I highly suggest that you read this post. 

Tip One: Create a Spot for Shoe Storage

Consider where you want to store your shoes. Go through them all, purge, and get rid of any that no longer fit or that you don’t wear. If you don’t already have good storage for shoes, I wrote an article about cute and practical DIY shoe storage and organization that might help you with some fun ideas for storing shoes. If you have a small space for storing shoes, coats, and all the things, then refer to this article about setting up a functional mudroom in a  small space.

In this house we decided to keep all of our shoes in the garage in order to cut down on the amount of dirt that we track in. We find this system works the best for us and I definitely recommend considering it if you have the space to do so. We don’t wear our shoes in our house so we like to keep them in the area where we enter and exit our home. We have our shoes stored on some Ikea Expedit shelving that we already owned and repurposed to the garage when we moved into this house. When we eventually tackle our garage as part of this Organizing Challenge, I will likely re-look at the most efficient shoe storage options for that space.

In our previous homes, where we had our shoes in the garage, inside the closet or armoire, or out in the open, we used a variety of shoe storage systems like these…

Ikea also makes some amazing flat covered shoe storage solutions to check out.

Tips Two: Invest in a Closed Storage Solution

Closed storage refers something like a closet or an armoire cabinet where you can keep the majority of your things hidden behind closed doors.

We keep all of our coats, bags, and winter gear in our mudroom. Most of our stuff lives in a large built-closet. If you don’t have a large built-in closet you might want to consider whether you have space for a free standing armoire. In our previous house we had a small armoire in our tiny mudroom space that worked well for storing our coats. When we moved into the cabin, while building, there was no front coat closet and no space for storing shoes or coats. We purchased this three door Brimnes Armoire from Ikea  and used it to store all the things!

It’s not really pretty inside, but a big closet like this works really well for storing the majority of our ‘stuff’. Sorting the overflow items into baskets helps make it easy to access less frequently used items.

In this house, we store our coats on the hanging rod and put extra bags/winter gear/ purses etc. in the bins on the upper shelf. Below, on the floor, we keep our reusable grocery bags as well as extra laundry baskets (when they aren’t sitting on my sons’ beds waiting to be unloaded into their drawers).

I used baskets that I have owned for several years to divide our belongings by category. One has my purses and another contains extra bags/backpacks that the boys use. The third has winter hats/gloves etc., and the fourth houses our snow pants. I picked these bins up at Michaels several years back but have seen similar ones at HomeSense and online through places like Amazon in the recent past.

I’ve gathered some similar large storage bins here:

Tip Three: Add a Bench or Chair

A bench or chair is great to have for putting down items as you enter or exit your home. It can act as a landing zone, greatly contributing to the day-to-day function of your family entryway mudroom space.

In the mudroom side of this room we have a lovely live-edge wooden floating bench that our kitchen cabinet maker built.  It actually matches the open shelves in our kitchen as well as our living room wooden mantel. While it works perfectly in this home, you certainly don’t need a built-in bench in order to get the function. It is easy to find simple benches at all kinds of furniture retailers, including ones specifically made for family mudroom/entryways with extra storage options.

A hall tree can be a great solution, if you have a bit of open wall space. There is often space for storage below the bench, and room above with hooks and shelves…

Tip Four: Add Wall Storage/Hooks

Having a space for quick storage using hooks on the wall makes a family entryway mudroom that much more useable and efficient. At least you know things will be quickly hung up and off the floor and you can keep those items you are using constantly within easy reach. I like to hang all the coats up in the closet on a fairly regular (almost daily) basis so it doesn’t get too cluttered on the hooks, but they function well for immediate use.

I’ve gathered some similar finds here:

Tip Five: Incorporate Easy to Use Storage Bins

Under the bench is a storage basket for each member of the family to keep track of frequently-used loose items like hats, gloves, small bags, sports gear etc. I find this system super easy to keep up with and love having a different basket for each person. I keep them in order of age so it’s easy to remember; my youngest’s basket is the first one and so on. I recently picked these baskets up at Walmart and am thrilled that four of them fit perfectly under our bench. My best advice is to measure the space you have and then make sure you bring your measurements and a tape measure to the store when you are searching for the right storage baskets!

I’ve gathered some similar bins here:

Tip Six: Consider Adding a Command Center Zone

We also have our family command center/ office set-up in this area – and you can see a little section of our command center to the right of the bench. You can read more about that in this post. 

This entire space functions as a great family entryway because it houses everything we need for the day-to-day chaos of a busy family’s life. From coats and outerwear, to the calendar, reminders, mail bins, keys, and a charging station. Creating this zone has really helped this house function so much better for us, and helps us keep our junk off the kitchen island!

I hope you found some great ideas and tips you can use for organizing a family mudroom entryway space that functions well for your family!

I shared the other half of this room yesterday – along with my tips for organizing a laundry room space. 

So far in this year’s updated version of the challenge, I’ve shared:

 

Want this in an easy to digest e-book form? You can learn more about that here!

You can see all of the posts related to my original take on this Ten Week Organizing Challenge by visiting my challenge Intro article here.  

AND…the first time I tackled this challenge back in 2017, I shared these posts for Week Three (Laundry Room and Mud Room):

Week Three: Laundry and Mud Room

How to Create an Organized Entry or Mud Room in a Small Space

How to Completely Organize Your Laundry Space in Three Steps

How to setup a functional mudroom in small space (updated challenge in 2020)

How to organize your laundry space with a rolling cart (updated challenge in 2020)

Inspiration Articles:

 20+ Beautiful & Organized Small Laundry Rooms  

Small Entry & Mud Room Organization Ideas.

Each week over the course of this challenge, I’m going to be sharing my process of working through this challenge in our new home with updated tricks, tips, and organizing systems. If you want to follow along with my new version of the challenge, sign-up below for my new email list! Ten Week Organizing Challenge 2022.