Last month I blogged about tackling those unseen areas in our home, the ones that no one else but our family knows is a mess. My plan was to get to these areas one spot at a time. I also talked about writing down all of the areas that need work.
At first I thought I would tackle our linen closet, since it is the biggest mess and one of the more commonly used areas in our home. But instead I decided to take a different approach. I am going room by room, starting with the front of our home, the living room.
If you have a front hall closet, you know this can easily become a place to throw a number of items. You may have originally planned for this to be the area you hang jackets and store shoes but suddenly it has been taken over by boxes, vacuum cleaners and other unnecessary items.
The first thing you need to do is decide what your front hall closet should hold. I took out the vacuum cleaner since the only carpeting I have is downstairs. It made no sense to drag my vacuum cleaner up and down the stairs. So I found a new home for it on the level where it’s used.
I want my front hall closet to be where we store coats, sweaters, shoes, winter gear (gloves, hats, etc.) and umbrellas. To me this makes the most sense. That is how you have to look at each area in your home…what makes most sense in how you use it?
The only way to tackle a closet is to first empty it. Take out everything…and I mean everything. This is also a great way to look at your empty closet and decide if you need to install shelves, hooks or a pole.
Whatever you decide to use your closet for, you need to make it workable. I use hooks to hang umbrellas on. I have a pole installed where coats and jackets are hung up. But then I also put in
there a shoe rack that clips onto the pole. I was tired of shoes piling up on the floor, so this keeps them off the ground.
I also have a small laundry basket which contains winter hats, gloves, scarves and the like. Since I had so much extra space on the floor, I then decided to also keep plastic containers that hold my outdoor decorations. I have a box where I store Fourth of July decorations, one for Christmas, the harvest season and so forth.
What ideas do you have for organizing your front hall closet?
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Photo by klynslis in Flickr