How do you stop your hallway being an absolute riot?

[Revelwithacause]

Need hallway storage inspiration! Family of 5 here with a narrow hallway and awkward sloped area under stairs that is always full of shoes bags coats etc. how do you deal with it all?!

By regularly shouting the following...

WHOSE coat is this dumped here?!
WHO left these shoes out?!
WHY is there a pair of dirty socks in the hall?!
WHICH ONE OF YOU does this bag belong to?!
WHY is there a half drunk glass of squash balanced on the bannister?!

And 20 other similar variations. Drives me absolutely nuts. Especially as the hallway is the one bit that anyone knocking the door will see. Go dump your crap somewhere else please!

Sorry nothing helpful to add 😂

Loads of hooks

Every night with 10 minutes to go before dinner I call everyone done and say
Dinner on the table in 10 mins subject to hall being cleared

Streamlined our stuff and made sure we had hooks, baskets, shelf etc. Everyone tidied up and puts away as they go. Well...4 year old often doesn't but the theory is there 🤣🤣

I don't know but I was looking at a house recently that had a kind of built in cupboard running the length of the (very large) hallway for stowing away coats and shoes and it looked amazing.

You need dumping baskets. For all the bits. Ours is on top of a shoe cupboard. If it’s very narrow could you put in a radiator cabinet so you can use it as the shelf?

Porch?
Ours has hooks for coats, shelf for hats, drawers for gloves, rack for boots and a huge box where I throw any shoes that haven’t been taken to bedrooms. I haven’t quite mastered a location for school bags other than spare chair in corner of kitchen which is not ideal.

We have a hall cupboard under the stairs so fortunately I can sling most of this stuff in there. There's a big shelf where the school bags go plus lots of hooks for coats, scarves etc. Unfortunately it's also crammed with loads of other stuff (hoover, ironing board, multiple tennis raquets and netballs, umbrellas etc). It's a mess, but thankfully I can close the door on it so it's not visible.

We also have a shoe rack (IKEA) in the hall, and each person is allowed space on or under it for 2 pairs of shoes (we're also a family of 5). The rest of the shoes are upstairs in wardrobes.

Storage is key I think.

Put a door on the under stairs bit where the shoes, bags, drawers, spin dryer, sewing machine and hoover live. Shut the door, hide the crap and forget about it.

I have virtually no hall way as I live in a conversion and they didn't seem to think it was necessary! We have coat hooks and a slim shoe rack for every day shoes (the rest are kept in bedrooms). We have to keep the shoes tidy as you can't open the front door if they're not! So it's a case of there not being anywhere to get messy!

Take the out of season stuff and store it somewhere else.

(Ours is frequently a disaster despite this; I don't know the secret!)

I think you probably need to work out what's likely to need to be there in the middle of winter, and make sure there's enough dedicated space to put all of that stuff.

Could you turn the sloped area into a cupboard with built in storage?

(We cheat by mostly using entering the house from the garage through the cellar, which is a bomb site but visitors don't see it)

Try to give everything a place; coats that aren’t used every day/every week are in wardrobes and same with shoes for me and DH. I’ve got a little box for kids hats, gloves etc and school bag goes in there too. Put it away as soon as I get in.

Mine's terrible!

I'm amazed to remember my dm had a strict don't leave it in the hall policy. Which we followed. We weren't allowed to leave stuff downstairs at all really. But people didn't have so much stuff maybe? (1970s/80s). My dm wasn't even a massively strict person except this.

We, on the other hand, have loads of crap in the hallway some of it for years. Dh likes it that our house looks lived in. Imo that would be a giant step up from now.

Was just coming on to post the same! I'm trying to sort my hall out and so far thinking:
slim shoe cabinets like these if they fit my teenager's size 11 shoes:
Fernleaf 8 Pair Shoe Storage & Reviews | Wayfair.co.uk
Three Posts Renningers 12 Pair Shoe Storage Cabinet & Reviews | Wayfair.co.uk

A shelf or hooks above for keys, dog lead & post
HÄSTVISKARE Wall organiser w hooks, oak, 42x15x11 cm - IKEA
ÅKERBRUK Wall organiser w hooks, 42x12x26 cm - IKEA

I do have a small cupboard so not entirely lacking but it's always stuffed full of coats and bags and it's mainly the shoes that bug me!

Ikea might be your friend - they're generally good on hallway storage and organisation. Hooks, shoe cupboards, shelving, etc. Depends on your hallway shape and measurements.

Ruthlessly declutter!
I have beds with inbuilt storage, which contain out of season clothes and shoes. And I use shoe racks so boots and trainers aren't scattered all over the floor.
I put hooks on the back of bedroom doors for dressing gowns and jackets. Basically people have to keep their belongings on their own rooms and not dumped in communal spaces.

Yes absolutely agree with back of door space - my kids all now have hooks on their doors (& on the side of the wardrobes) so now keep all their coats upstairs A small cheap and easy fix but has made a huge difference already. Oh, and hooks in the bathroom for dressing gowns, a large shelf/ ladder towel rails above the bath and a hook ffor hand towel that previously would be dumped on the floor- no idea why I didn't think of this sooner! Sort and Declutter is my January job!

By having the wall under our stairs knocked out and drawers and a cupboard built instead.
had it done by this company nearly 10 years ago and they’re fantastic, loads of places do it now or you could get a carpenter to do it.

was well worth the money (and wasn’t actually too expensive anyway) Under stairs storage

This looks fabulous! Would you mind telling me how much yours cost?

We have a wardrobe in the hall that has hanging space for coats, wide drawers underneath we keep shoes in and narrow drawers up the side where hats/gloves/swimming kits etc live. It’s an Ikea Pax one, the previous owners of our house put it in and we’ve stuck with it because it works really well.

We have added a waist high rails of hooks near the front door where the kids used to dump their school bags so they can be hung up.

@MimiSunshine I like the secret wine stash in the photo!

I'm going to go against the grain.
You don't need more storage in the hall, you need less stuff that might be left in the hall.
You can only wear one pair of shoes and one coat at a time. So maybe space for a bag each, 2 pairs of shoes each, and a coat each readily accessible. Everything else can live elsewhere.

Yes, we use the space under the stairs - but we have a door at the tall end - not the angled side. I suspect access here isn't typical tho!

We have a small hall, so don’t keep shoes or clothes in it. When we go inside we remove our shoes and take them upstairs into our bedrooms. Coats are hung on hooks on the back of bedroom doors. School bags stay in bedrooms too.

Despite having a reasonably sized house there is very little storage (typically weird British thing when you compare to the Americans). I have hooks and a shoe cubby-hole storage thing yet the hallway is still messy with jackets and shoes and bags that are surplus to the storage space. Even when it’s all cleared it’s not long till it’s back to square one. I curse British house builders (from all decades) who put zero thought into storage.