Our New Mudroom (That Used to Be a Closet)

This is our new mudroom.  It used to be a closet, but we had to make the best use of the space we had.

Our new home doesn’t have a traditional room coming in our back door, but it does have a hallway leading from the garage into the kitchen, and there was a large coat closet just inside the back door. With three kids, dogs, backpacks etc. etc. we need all the storage space we could get, so we decided while the closet was nice {closed doors and all that} we wanted to use the space more as a functional mini-mudroom.

We’ve had constant ice and snow here in Virginia, and the light has been dreadful.  So, I’ll be back with better photos, plus a step-by-step post about how we did this.  Today I am just sharing the finished product (that’s the most fun, anyway!) but you can see all the details on how we did it HERE.

Above you can see what it looked like before we pulled out the {hated} wire shelving that came with the house and before we took the doors off. The doors from the closet were constantly in the way, since it is really a hallway, so it just made sense that they would have to go. Yes, I did worry that our “mess” would be exposed, but in the end it is so nice not having the doors always in the way, a little mess isn’t a big deal.

The door on the left opened into the garage door and the one on the right into the laundry room, which made no sense and they blocked traffic in and out of both the garage and the laundry room. In addition to being practical, taking them off made the space feel so much larger and more useful.

 

A few days of construction later, this is the space we came up with.

While it’s a bit of a challenge to keep it neat since this closet is now ‘door-less’, especially with all the winter coats piling up, I find my kids have a higher success rate hanging their jacket and backpack on a hook then a hanger, so that’s a win.

They each have their own section for their belongings and my husband and I share one.  Five sections would have been ideal, but then they each would have been too narrow so we settled for four.

 

We’ve cut down on lost library books, hats and other small items that are all now stored in their baskets. I used chalkboard tags from Michaels and added their initials {so that my husband and I could share one tag–our married monogram worked perfectly} to mark everyone’s individual spaces.

I had to order several rounds of baskets before I found ones that fit the way I wanted them to.  These are from The Container Store. It was the whole Goldilocks thing–too big, too small, these were pretty much just right {well, I’d have loved them to be a little taller but by the time these came in I just wanted it done!}.  In the top of this picture you can see we also had a second higher shelf built.  You can’t see it unless you are standing directly under the closet, but it works perfectly to store extra stuff–dog food, plastic bags, etc. that I don’t have space for in my pantry and don’t want to see.

 

 

I took pictures during the construction, so I’ll post a second post about how it was done. The space is so much more functional now. I can’t even remember what it used to be like with the doors on the closet so I obviously don’t miss them too much.

Be sure to sign up for our email updates {here} if you want to see more of our new home updates. The full tour is HERE.

To see the updated “how we did it” post click HERE.

XO,