Tips on Organizing Your Home Entryway
You come home after a long day of work, enter the front door, kick off your shoes, and throw your keys without looking and promise yourself you’ll clean up later.
You don’t clean up later.
Your kids come home from baseball practice and toss their equipment behind the door. Your spouse comes home after a rainstorm and forgets to put their umbrella away. Little by little, the chaos builds up until your home’s entryway is a disordered disaster.
It’s a common occurrence. Entryways and foyers are among the messiest parts of most houses. Fret not, there’s no need to abandon your home entirely and start looking up Bellevue houses for sale. Instead, try decluttering with the following tips:
Move Everything, Scrub Everything
You might think that it’s best to take things one step at a time, to just clean and reorganize things a little bit here, a little bit there. The truth, however, is that it’s all too easy to fall off that wagon. You take a break for one day, and before you know it weeks have gone by. All the while, the clutter has continued to build up, leaving you in a worse situation than the one you started in.
That’s why it’s better to set aside a full day, if you can, to move every piece of junk, every misplaced clothing item, every dirty shoe, and every outdoor toy… all at once. Get everything out of the way so you can start over with a new blank slate.
This will also allow you to get a better idea of what condition your entryway is in under all that clutter. Now, at least, you can wipe down the doors and windows, disinfect the knobs and handles, and mop the floors without interference.
Eliminate Items That Do Not Belong
Once you’ve moved all the clutter away from your home’s entryway, you can begin reviewing the items in question. You’d be amazed at how many times you’ll find yourself saying things like “I thought I lost that” and “I didn’t even know I owned this.”
From there, you can begin returning things to the places they actually belong. Among the biggest culprits behind entryway clutter are exhaustion and absentmindedness. People put things down as soon as they come in, then quickly forget where they left them.
The only items that have a place near your entryway are things you use frequently, and exclusively, when you’re leaving the house: pet leashes, umbrellas, snow shovels, car keys, etc. Everything else is just taking up space.
Mount Hooks & Add Storage Options
Whether you have a lot of stuff that “belongs” near the entryway or just a little, it can be hard finding room for even the smallest number of items. Entryways aren’t really meant for storage, after all; they’re liminal spaces, not destinations unto themselves. How, then, are you supposed to keep all your items organized?
If you don’t have enough storage items, add some. Then add a few more, just in case. Mount hooks on the walls for coats and hats. Use an umbrella stand to store canes and, well, umbrellas. Instead of having everyone just kick off their shoes and leave them all piled up, put in some cubbies.
Of course, all the storage in the world isn’t worth a dime if you don’t use it, so try your best to hammer home the idea, both yourself and your family members, that utilizing these storage options should be a normal part of the daily routine. In the end, that’s the most important thing to reducing entryway clutter.
