A "Good Enough" Entryway...

Where do you and your kids enter your house? Back, front, garage, side? And where does all the "stuff" go?

You know the stuff I mean - the school bags, the shoes (oh, the shoes!) the socks, the inside-out jumpers, the library bags, the 'things that need to go back to the car', the 'things that need to go to the charity bin', the shoes...

We enter the house through the front door. Consequently that is also where the stuff goes. It has been driving me mad for a long time. I had a small bench at the entry to sit on whilst putting on shoes, and the shoes were supposed to go under it. They. never. did. The kids school bags went on the seat of the bench, but when they were there, there was nowhere to sit! Arrggh.

What I really really want is one of these. I have even printed out the plans and started costing it.

But I'm trying to be realistic. The time frame for planning, saving, buying materials, learning to use the power tools and actually building it is loooong.

So I have compromised for the sake of my sanity (oh! the shoes!). I 'borrowed' an Ikea 'Billy' shelving unit from our office by re-arranging a few things and have made an entryway organiser that is good enough for now.

I re-arranged the shelves so that there is an open space at kid-level. I used 3M hooks for their school bags. Homework folders and library books can sit flat on the shelf under the bags if needed. School shoes go on the bottom shelf, casual shoes above the bags. (Since I took the photos, I have added some inital stickers to show whose things go where - working well, especially for the SHOES.)

 

I picked up some 9L rectangular basins at the supermarket that fit really well onto the shelves, which hold hats, sports gear and schoolwork ready to be sorted (either 'filed' in the bin when the kid's not looking round file or put into a binder for keeping). Some old alphabet stickers and the help of a six-year-old shows what's inside. There is still room on the top for those 'pending' things - wiaiting to leave the house to their next destination. I am on the lookout for some nice baskets for that spot.

Ahhhh!

That's better. Not perfect, but definitely better. Shoes all over the floor are no longer sending me slowly insane bothering me.

What's good enough at your place lately?