The Coat Area - Challenge #8 - 21 Days to Get Organized

I don't have an actual coat closet, and for the first year we lived here, I had no real place to put coats, backpacks, scarves, gloves etc.  It was always a mess and no one could ever find anything.  Then this past summer before school started, I rearranged our hallway and put up coat hooks and put an old table under it as a bench which worked great. There's plenty of room to put their backpacks on it and still sit to put on boots or shoes.  I wanted to find an old cedar chest or something so I could store stuff inside it as well as be able to sit on it, but this has been working ok.

This is how it looked July 2010

Until recently...

This is how it looked this morning.

With us moving kids around from one room to another and Corina moving out and stuff kind of getting shoved everywhere - plus Christmas decorations and boxes and other storage boxes that are awaiting the truck to get fixed so we can haul it all over to the storage unit (which is like 50 yards from here - I ought to just buy a big wagon and pull it all over there sheesh) - well anyway the hallway became the place to just put stuff, and the pile grew and grew and it made it harder and harder to really use the coat hooks and bench area well.  Plus the kids would just throw junk on the bench and not hang their coats and throw gloves on the floor...

So, Challenge #8 forced me to reassess the situation and redo it. 

Now I have a small laundry basket to hold gloves, scarves and hats, and I culled them down to one set for each of the 3 remaining kids.

I think this works better, and hopefully it'll get used for what it's supposed to be used for now. Notice there's only one coat hanging there and I have 3 kids... yeah the other coats and jackets and hoodies are strewn all over the house.  I think I'll just gather them all up and wash them tonight so they're fresh smelling and clean for next week. And maybe, just maybe the kids will take them off after school and hang them on the hooks...  I can dream.

Ahhh it looks like it did in the summer... for now. Now to reorganize that bookshelf.

Go see Toni at A Bowl Full of Lemons for more!