A week of Ideas Part Deux

Don't you just love home renos that can be completed in just about a day, cost almost nothing and rather than make any mess, they clean it all up... oh, how I like those.

Here's part 2 of my week of little ideas that have been adding so much joy and functionality to our new home, I hope maybe they present a solution to some of the little organization, decorating issues we all come across, or they invite you to share some of your own from the corners of your own home.

For today let's move further down the back hallway to the back entrance to the garage.
Which looked like this two weeks ago....

This, for me, is the problem with sliding-door closets; they often become a dark abyss which cannot be fully opened and everything get's tossed into them never to be seen again without huge effort to crawl into that dark cramped space and rummage through the pile of stuff that was only organized once upon a time.

Once the necessary items have been retrieved from the closet, they are almost never returned because no one wants to ever have to go hunting for them again like they did....

And so they migrate further and further from their original homes until they begin to take up even the hallway....
Until one bright day, the mother of the house convinces the father of the house to pull off those wretched closet doors.!

I paired down the items from the mystery closet, stored what's not necessary in the OTHER closet by the front door (which has practically nothing in it and doesn't look like constant chaos) including the shoes we wear once and a while.
You see, storage is not what this entrance was lacking, it was space.
we have plenty of roomy closets and a bench by the front door full of lovely places for all our winter (and summer) paraphernalia. What we needed was some room to maneuver out the back door more efficiently. There needed to be a place to plop the kids down to put on their shoes, a tidy place to hang up our everyday coat or sweaters (and my family seems particularly allergic to using hangars), so we needed hooks and yes, we needed some place to keep our keys, purse, re-usable bags, a couple pairs of indispensable mittens, toques etc. and it all had to look pretty while still being accessible.

I needed a mudroom, not a closet.

Bye Bye closet.....

Because of the original structure of the closet and my being loathe to rip the  whole thing out in a way that can't be reversed easily, there was no option for putting in any unit of drawers for all our accessories, so Kevin put in a couple rows of shelves that we already owned but weren't using.

Some baskets that I scored for 70% off at Canadian Tire, serve very nicely to hold all our detritus at bay, and two extra pillows from our old house, match the door rug and create a little seat for the kids to put on their shoes. Our every day shoes (and a little bin of options for both the kids) is stowed neatly under the shelf that already existed in the closet and a couple extra hooks above the bench means no coats, sweaters, scarves or hats ever have a reason to lay about on the floor.

This handy little idea was adapted from a rather complicated idea from Martha Stewart (drilling a hole through a wooden doorstop and putting rope through it.) This rubber doorstop came with the house and is handy for bringing in the groceries and such, so I twisted a little screw hook into the heel of it and strung it on the door knob with a scrap of ribbon. There when I need it, and hanging in one spot, without getting tripped on it, when I don't.

So there you have it, now we can all wave goodbye to the back entrance way and look forward to seeing some more corners and ideas in the days to come!

Have a great day!