help with keeping hallway tidy please.

[mumat39]

hello
i tried to browse through the various babysteps threads but am still not sure.

i need help with shoe storage, bikes and scooters and toy storage. And bloody post.

At the moment we have an old chest of drawers in the hallway by the front door shoes but need to reclaim that for clothes. So where/how do you all store shoes? Dp has size 10/11 shoes so we need something that will hold those but also Dc shoes. Between us we have about 16 pairs for everyday wear inc. shoes, trainers, sandals, wellies/boots.

Also under the stairs is a mess with two scooters, a bike, a space hopper plus a few other toys. Haven't really got anywhete else to put these as car boot already has 2 buggies in it. Any ideas?

Also, where do you put paperwork? I have piles of it all over the place including on chest of drawers for shoes. I have a plastic storage filing box which is at the bottom of my wardrobe and not easy to get to besides which it is full to bursting. So i would be more organised about putting stuff away i hope if it was just a bit easier.

We also have a rug by the front door to stop all of us walking too much rubbish in and esp wet feet. But the rug is also messy looking. We have a laminate floor.

It would be SO lovely to have a nice welcoming hallway that I don't have to apologise for so any advice would be great.

Many thanks in advance and apologies for any typos.

have you got a shed to store bikes/scooters ect then store shoes under the stairs?
or we had no space for storage so we had a full length cupboard built that stores coats hats shoes ect in is that a possiablity?

Thanks Rachey. A built in cupboard would be great but there isn't really enough room for anything taller than the chest of drawers. The coats are on 2 sets of hooks behind the front door so it's really shoe and toy storage that we need. The shed would also be good but again there's not really the room for it in the garden. I guess the bikes and scooters under the stairs aren't the end of the world. It's just so messy looking.

Can you keep the majority of the shoes in your wardrobe and just keep the pairs in most current use by the door?

Is the chest of drawers staying in the hall or are you putting that in a different room when you put clothes instead of shoes in it?
Can you find room somewhere in the house for a small filing cabinet or desk with a filing drawer or even a shelf for files to put your paperwork?

I've just bought hall storage from GLTC - a 3 basket bench, and a taller 4 basket and 2 small drawers unit. Its painted with wooden tops. Its really nice and its made me really reduce what we keep in the hallway. We each have 3 or so pairs of shoes, our gloves and scarves and hats and umbrellas, and that's it., Everything else is upstairs (shoes we don't wear often enough to keep downstairs), in the cupboard under the stairs (coats and my long boots and handbags) or in the utility room (wellies).

Its made me feel so much better to remove all the crap. It used to really get me down to see it all everytime I walked through the front door.

mumdebump, hello. At the moment, the shoes we have by the front door are ones that are worn on most days. The weather at the moment is so changeable it's affecting what could be put away. We also don't have any space left in our wardrobes which are on the top floor of our 3 floor town house so the thought of having to go all the way upstairs to get shoes when we're already running late to get DD to nursery won't work. It's hard enough getting out most days with everything by the front door. Sorry if I sound negative about your ideas. I am very grateful and I have tried that before and all that happened is things found themselves back downstairs where they really need to be.

The chest of drawers will be moved back into our bedroom, which will be cramped but we need the storage space for clothes which otherwise live in the laundry basket. The filing cabinet sounds like a good idea but again space is an issue. We don't have a printer but I wondered about just scanning things in and getting rid of paper copies, but sometimes you need hard copies of the originals of documents so don't know how that would work. Also if we got a printer we'd have to find somewhere to put it. In an ideal world we'd move but that's not going to be possible for a long while. :( Thanks for your help though. :)

HappyAsEyeAm, thanks for your reply too. I have looked at the GLTC storage before and it is lovely but a bit too expensive for us. Ikea have the Expedit range but the sizes are either too small or way too big.

Is your living room next to the hall? We have a Victorian blanket box that acts as a table. You can store stuff in that - school bags, small toys. I have an art folder for paperwork that can slide under a bed or sofa.
We have an ikea shoe rack in hall for shoes. As long as shoes are put on neatly it looks fine.
To deal with paperwork on pin board in hall / kitchen?

hi. Our kitchen with dining table is on the ground floor, lounge and dumping room spare room with toys desk etc on middle floor and bedrooms on the top floor. DP said when we moved that townhouses have alot of wasted space in the hallway and landings but i was 7 months pregnant and just wanted to move out of our ground floor flat as we lived under a family of very noisy people. i think he was right. :(

Have a look at my blog post on this very same topic. Hope it's helpful.

making an entrance

here's the link from Boffin

Hi, with paperwork from school ie. dates, info sheets I have taken to taking a photo using my phone and the binning the original. Means I have the info if I need it but no the endless pile of paperwork schools send home.

Could also do with other paperwork or do you have a spare drawer in the kitchen you could put that in.

We have a basket for kids shoes and a basket for our shoes in the utility room, would nice looking baskets would instead of furniture if spare is limited?

Whoops, sorry, I did that in admin mode.

BTW it might sound obvious, but would there be any possibility of getting rid of, say, a third of your stuff? To take the pressure off?

I use a ring binder with separate sections for things - a section for each school/nursery, a section for each extra-curricular thing, a section for pets, that kind of thing. Very Important and Urgent letters are clipped to the A4 diary we leave in the hall for that purpose, with a big bulldog clip.

Household Captain's Log

Expensive but fun

Masses of storage on this one, but kids' shoes might not fit

This range is super practical and you can always make a cover from a vintage fabric if it looks too utilitarian for your house

This from ikea changed my life hallway.

Expensive again, but you can get cheaper copies. I believe they have a bespoke design service if you want this, by the way. You should put a curtain in front of it to disguise the look

Bofgin, thanks for the making an entrance link. We have the 2 sets of pegs already so it's good to know we got that right. I still need help with the rest. We used to have one of those open shoe racks but it looked awful. And Dp's shoes were always falling off as it wasn't wide enough.
Fresh, would love a utility room . We have drawers stuffed full of paperwork already. I go through it and cull every so often but then don't know what to do with the rest do it goes back into the drawer. Of the few bags i have stuffed into various places around the house. How long do you keep bank statements, bills etc.?

Some great ideas here

Paperwork that relates to tax needs to be kept for seven years. Put each tax year's worth in a large envelope and store them in the attic in an archive box. Everything else needs culling annually.

A small filing cabinet is usually a good investment.

silent, i was keen on that one but our skirting boards are taller than the back of the unit. Any ideas how we could get around that?

Boffin, thsnks for all the links. I've seen them before. I'd worry about Dc falling and catching themsrlves on the sticky out one. The flexible shelving would be excellent in a utiliyy room but not sure I could face coming into that everyday ifkwim?

More ideas, bit expensive possibly, but attractive

I think we need a picture of your hallway and some rough dimensions and descriptions of any physical obstacles in order to progress this, tbh. Can you manage that?

Boffin, the john Lewis cabinet is lovely but so pricey.

i didn't see the thing about the curtsin on the flexi shelving. hmmm interesting.

Do you think it wiul be ok to put something at the botyom of the stairs? like a sideboard? or would that be a hazard? I'm thinking shoes could go into the cupboard bit and a nice lamp on top with a photo or two plus post into the drawers?

You could take the skirting board off in that area, trim the back of the unit, or alternatively contrive a way to mount it on the wall above the skirting. Getting a carpenter in would give better results.