In the past few years we’ve noticed that mudrooms have become incredibly popular. And we totally get it- having a “landing space” for your stuff when you get home can make such a difference in keeping things more organized. Plus, it’s another fun room to design! A lot of people go neutral with the style, because these spaces generally contain more of the colorful family debris, but we think it’s a great place to go a little wild too. Over at Project Jenjamin, we’ve been desperate for a solution to our sad, sad shoe rack, so here’s some of the inspiration we’ve stumbled across.
Barn Door Mudroom // Laundry Room Mudroom // Grey Mudroom
However, not everyone has the square footage to pull off the full family locker-room look. Us included. Our front door opens into our living area, but we’ve got a small stretch of blank wall that just may do the trick. We’ve found some pretty amazing inspiration from people who made the most of what they’ve got as well.
John and Sherry added a “hidden” mudroom in their sleek kitchen cabinets, perfectly adjacent to their back door, and totally undercover.
Toni kept things super simple and functional, but made a big difference on a blank stretch of wall in her garage. A few baskets, hooks, and labels transformed this small space into an organized drop zone for her family.
Bethany took an unused corner and turned it into a Backpack Wall for her boys. A little trim work and some chalkboard paint made that space a perfect wall to corral the kids’ stuff.
So that’s basically what we’re working with here, a little bit of blank wall around the corner from our front door.
There’s a lot of open space in the dining room because of how we oriented our dining table, so we’re able to take it over a bit and work with that wall to the right of the large window. We also have plans to build something in under the curved edge of the kitchen countertop. This open space tends to be our “home gym”, so that’s the perfect area to add some shelves/cubbies to store some of that gear.
But back to the “mudroom”, here’s what we’ve got:
A nice blank slate. Around that corner is the front door, so this area is nice and convenient for drop-zone type stuff. Ben usually sets his coat down on the sectional (which drives me only a little bit nuts), and we have this sad, undersized shelf for store storage since we try to be a shoe-free household. But this isn’t an ideal setup. First of all, the shelf isn’t really adequate for three people. I mean, look how big Ben’s Crocs are compared to the shelf- they take up like half of it 🙂
So it’s important for us to build a much larger shoe shelf- which would ideally be a bench that provides a perfect place to sit while putting shoes on. Then we need a shelf or wall hooks for hanging coats. Here’s the rough plan:
Up top: a simple coat rack with several hooks. Something nice to wrangle coats, umbrellas, you know all the usual suspects. I had originally thought to build a shelf with hooks underneath, so that we could do some baskets on the shelf for storing smaller winter gear and similar stuff. But we really don’t use those kinds of items often enough to necessitate the shelf, and I’d like to keep this area as simple as possible. I have a piece from my grad school days that just may be perfect, so we’ll see if I can find it and make this happen 🙂 I’m thinking that maybe an over the door storage piece for the hall closet would be much better suited for winter gear and similar items.
Below that, we want to build a custom bench with shelves for storing shoes. I’d love to weave the bench seat, I’ve gotten pretty obsessed with weaving since my brother got me this book for Christmas, and I think this would be the perfect place to incorporate a little weaving.
We’ve got plans to get this project underway soon, so we’ll keep you updated!
