How to Organize an Efficient Entryway

The entryway to your home is so important because it’s the first thing guests see when they come inside. As the old saying goes, “you never have a second chance to make a first impression”. And although it is important to make a good first impression, it’s more important that this area works efficiently so that clutter does not pile up. Here’s how I tackled the front entryway to our home!

Use the 6/P Strategy and do each of the following steps (if you need info on how to do the 6/P strategy click here) :

Prepare – Set up an area near the foyer with with 4 bins for the following categories. Trash, Donate, Relocate, Replace. My foyer does not collect clutter anymore so I was able to skip this step this year! Woo hoo!!

Purge – Remove everything from the space except for the furniture and put everything in one of the four categories

Polish – Deep clean the area using a top-down approach. This is one of the easiest areas for me to deep clean however, I constantly have to remove the smudges the dogs make on the side lights from sticking their cute little noses against the window when looking out and barking at the neighbors walking their dogs!

Personalize – It’s time to brainstorm to figure out how to make this area efficient for you and your family. Below is a picture of my printable and an explanation of what I did in this area.

HOW I PERSONALIZED OUR FRONT ENTRYWAY

When the boys were young they went in and out of the front door to catch the school bus. At that time, I had a console table with a mirror above it and it looked nice but we had no where to drop backpacks, coats hats, shoes, etc.

To solve the storage problem, I bought a bench with built in baskets for their backpacks and shoes. This worked great and we still have it.

Later we bought the mirror with coat hooks (at Biltmore House in Asheville, NC) which worked great for the kids to have a place to hang their coats.

Now the boys enter through the garage which means that the front entryway has a completely different function during our “almost” empty nest season. Now this area needs to function mainly for guests rather than family members. Here’s a pic of the entryway.

Here are the changes we made to the area:

Mirror-When we have parties, we need to have a place for guests to hang coats since we don’t have a coat closet. When we bought the mirror we did not realize the hooks were plastic and would not be able to hold the weight of winter coats. So, we had to find metal hooks to replace the plastic ones. This was no easy task, since we wanted the holes to line up so we wouldn’t have to patch and paint it. I could not find black hooks that would work so I had to spray paint the ones I bought.

Coat Rack – The mirror only has five hooks so we need to be able to store a lot more coats than that when we have parties and I did not want to line the wall with hooks so I opted for a coat rack. Found one I liked but did not like the color so had to spray paint it.

Place – Now it’s time to find a place for the items in your bins. Take out the trash. Put your donation bin in your car so you don’t forget about it. Relocate items that don’t belong in the space. Replace all items that do belong in the space. Here’s our foyer after the process.

Put Back – Remember, the most important step to having a clutter free home is to train yourself and your family members to put back items in the place they belong!!

The inside is organized but we didn’t stop there. Our front door was not making a very good first impression and it was definitely over due for painting. We also updated the handset and are really enjoying the key less entry. See Rich’s tech tip here for more information on how you can update your front door hardware as well.

Now our front door and entryway are ready to welcome guests for holiday gatherings, we’ll blink and that time will be here!

We’re not done yet, as I was saying earlier, we usually enter our home through the garage instead of the front door. We have several problems with clutter in that area and are in need of a storage solution. Did you know, most new homes are being built with mudrooms and/or drop zones near the garage entrance? But my home is 22 years old and I don’t have any built in areas for storage. Therefore, I’m going to set-up a “mudroom” in our garage and a “drop zone” inside the entry door on the wall. Below is my plan for how to personalize this area to make it efficient and functional for our needs.

HOW I PERSONALIZED OUR GARAGE ENTRYWAY

I forgot to take a picture before I purged and polished the area so you’ll have to believe me when I say it was a mess and as you can see, I’ve never done anything to spruce up the looks of it, it’s the garage so who cares right? Well, I care so I decided to do something about it!

Storage -I want this area to function as a drop zone for items I need when heading out the door, like reusable grocery bags that I always forget to take with me to the store. So then I get the plastic bags and inevitably forget to take them back to the store to recycle them. Oh the guilt!!! Occasionally we need rain ponchos and can never find them ,so we we need a place to store those. We also needed a place to put items we use on a regular basis that were landing on our freezer (and then behind the freezer after someone opened it & everything fell down behind it) like hats, gardening gloves and Rich’s headphones for mowing.

We added the hat wall to store the hats we use when working in the yard. Also added the wire baskets to hold rain gear and bags I need to take to the grocery.

We added two shelves to hold the black plastic bins. Inside the bins are disposable gloves and baggies, garden gloves and the head phones Rich wears when mowing. We also added the hooks for the dog leashes and the super cute picture of our two fur babies! I replaced the boot tray under the shelves so dirty shoes don’t have to go inside!

Water bottle storage-I take water with me in the car and to the gym and wanted bottles in sight so I wouldn’t forget to take one. Oh dear do you see a pattern happening here? Forgetful, me, no never!!

Modified drop zone-when we enter our home through the garage we don’t have an area for a true drop zone, so I’m going to use wall space instead. We’ve had these cute hooks, since the boys were little, they provide a great place to hang jackets and coats.

To this point we never came up with a place to store keys because I kept mine in my purse and Rich put his in the kitchen “junk drawer”. Once everyone in the house started driving, all the sets of keys pile up in the junk drawer and it’s causing too much clutter. Also, the mail was piling up on the kitchen counter. So, we hung 2 key racks and an organizer to hold mail on the wall across from our coat hooks.

Updating stairs – this is the part I’m most excited about!! These stairs have looked so plain and unfinished the whole time we’ve lived here. I wanted them to look more like an interior staircase. so I painted the risers and stained the steps. I love how they turned out! If you’d like to see how I did this, click here to see my DIY stair project.

Here is the garage entryway now. Quite a transformation and so much more functional! The icing on the cake is that it looks great too! Hope you enjoyed this post! Happy organizing!

Blessings, Rich and Donna