Anyone with more than one person living in your house knows how quickly a home entryway can look cluttered. Add three children, a dog, and a husband who works late and before you know it, the area near your front door can look like a disaster-zone. Coats strewn about, missing boot pairs, backpacks to trip over, hidden keys, piles of mail and paper, and dirty footprints leading upstairs. Are you searching for ways to achieve a peaceful and organized entrance to your home? Then consider some of the following ideas:

• Individual Family Member Hooks or Pegs
  Each person in your house needs their own hook or peg to hang their coat on right when they walk in the door. Although I would love if my family would walk across the room and hang their outerwear on a hanger in our coat closet, I know that this is just not practical. I like using the biggest dual hooks I can find at a hardware store so that I can space them out more, but a premade strip of hooks works great too. Now everyone in my home has their own hook near our front door and I use the coat closet for extra coats and hangers for guests.
• Individual Cubbies
  Hats, gloves, scarves, waterbottles and all the other paraphernalia your family has whenever they enter and leave your house all need a home as well. We use individual cubbies for each member of our house. Tucked above each person’s hook is a place for my family to store their stuff. I use the Closetmaid Cubicles Wire Bins in our mudroom. I hang them above a hook with the open end facing out so my family can store things like their hats and gloves when they hang up their coats. I also like the idea of Target’s Entryway with Cubbie Shelf with Coat Hooks. I’ve worked hard to “train” my family to be responsible for their own things in their cubbies.  Now I have a lot less, “Where is my Red Sox hat, Mom?”.
• A Coat Tree
  We tuck a coat tree into the corner of our entryway so the kids can hang their backpacks and I can hang my purse. It is out of the way and keeps bags off the floor.
• Key Hook
  Tired of that old hunt for your car keys when you are ready to head out the door? A key hook in a convenient spot in your entryway is a great place for you to store your keys so you always know where they are. I also like one with a little storage on top to put letters that need to go in the mailbox, stamps, and my address book.
• Paper Tray
  Do you feel like papers left on your countertop can multiple overnight? Why not have an organized place where all papers go? I love this paper tray because I tend to pile. This keeps my pile organized and looks neat in my space.

What do you do to keep your entryway or mudroom organized?