Keep your front hall organized with the help of a custom closet system. Here are a few of the design ideas that helped one Bowie, MD family eliminate mess.

We worked with a lovely family in Bowie recently who couldn’t seem to get a handle on the mess around their front door. Shoes piled up all year round. Coats became a jumbled mess during the winter. Backpacks and toys accumulated by magic, tripping unwary visitors as they entered the house.

It seems to be a common problem around Bowie—not because folks there are particularly unorganized, but because the area attracts lots of young families, and, let’s face it, kids are mess magnets. Since we see this issue so frequently, we thought we’d share some ideas for how to get your entryway organized with the help of a few custom design options.

Customizing Your Hallway Closet

If you’re tackling entryway clutter, your front closet is an obvious place to begin. Although these reach-in closets tend to be on the small side, we can redesign them to maximize your storage space.

First, if you’ve got one large hanging bar, I’d suggest getting rid of it. Instead, we can replace it with two bars, one high and one low. Your children can keep their coats on the lower bar since it’s easier for them to reach. This can encourage them to hang jackets up themselves instead of piling them by the door. Or, you can have the whole family use one bar and keep the other open for your guests.

I’d also suggest having those hanging bars take up only half the width of your closet. Why? So we can install shelving and drawers in the other half. This will give you space for hats, gloves, keys, and the dog’s leash and treats—and make everything easier to find when you’re in a rush

We can also install shoe shelves around the bottom of your closet so that you can keep the front door free of footwear. As a final suggestion, consider installing a slide-out mirror to allow for quick visual checks before leaving the house (a good way to spot marker stains, breakfast crumbs and hat hair).

This layout should give you plenty of space for everything and help keep your doorway clutter free, leaving you with a well-organized space that serves as a miniature mudroom. But it’s far from the only possible setup.

The Open Design Alternative

For a different spin on the classic hallway closet, consider a more open design. This is a popular option for entryways that are tight on space since open closet doors can impede foot traffic and even get caught on the front door.

The open design gets around this by removing the closet’s door entirely, turning your space into an alcove that combines closet storage with a seating area.

For this setup, I’d recommend a shelf (or shelves) up top, possibly with baskets to hold small items like gloves or sunglasses. Instead of a hanging bar, however, we can install hooks along the back wall, giving you a place to hang backpacks and coats without taking up the entire closet. Beneath those hooks, I’d recommend installing a bench seat. This is a great option for a couple of reasons:  people can sit here and get their shoes on and off without clogging up the hallway (especially useful if you’ve got young children or host guests frequently), and a bench seat also offers additional storage. We can design a lift-up seating cushion that hides space beneath for seasonal clothes or sports equipment. As an alternate option, we can use the space beneath your bench seat to install adjustable shoe racks that will hold both shoes and boots.

Get Help Designing the Perfect Solution for Your Home

Entryways don’t always offer a lot of extra space, but they play an important role in household management. Shoe, coats, and backpacks tend to end up here and can become quite a mess when you don’t have a storage solution to keep it all organized.

The suggestions above are popular ways to address this problem, but our custom closet designers have many more ideas. If your home, like plenty of others in Bowie, has a mountain of stuff piling up near your front door, give us a call to set up a free design consultation, and we’ll create a solution that fits for your family.