January 19: Mudroom Bookshelf

The front door of our house opens up right into our living room.   I would love to have an entry way or foyer with a coat closet, to collect all of our coats and shoes and bags that always end up in the middle of the living room.  Or I would love to have a mudroom off the back door in our kitchen.  But I have neither, so we have to make do with what we do have.  

The home for our shoes is in our closets in the bedrooms upstairs.  However, in reality, many of our shoes usually end up here, piled by the front door and our couch:

And our coats have a place to hang by the backdoor in the kitchen or in the closets upstairs, but they usualy end up here, hanging on the backs of our dining room chairs:  (along with a dining room table that collects all kinds of junk, but that is a post for another day!)

When I saw this idea on Pinterest for a bookshelf transformed into a mudroom, I knew that it would be perfect for us.  We have an extra bookshelf, as we just moved a bunch of books out of our house and into Daniel's office.  We also have a free corner in the living room, where we could put the bookshelf.  So after thinking about this idea for months, we finally made it happen today!

Here is the final product.  It's really fairly simple, and I could probably dress it up a bit more.  But I am pretty happy with the way it looks and the organization that it provides!

I'm planning to put gloves, hats and scarves in the top basket during the winter.  This basket may also work as a place to store my camera and accessories, as I always want to have my camera accessible but not necessarily sitting out in plain sight.

The smaller basket is for keys, sunglasses and other small items that we want to keep handy on our way out the door.

Since we already had the bookshelf, this was a pretty cheap project for us.  I got the baskets at Hobby Lobby for 50% off, so they were only $12 total.  We bought three hooks to hang the coats, which cost $12.  Then we had to buy some adjustable feet ($4) to put on the bottom of the bookshelf to level it out, as it sits both on the carpet and the hardwood floor. 

So the total cost for our little mudroom project in the living room was:  $28.  Not too shabby!