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Your home’s entryway is a hardworking space that greets you after a long day, welcomes guests, and helps keep all the “stuff” of a busy life organized. Here are some of the most clever mudroom ideas for this busy room.
We have a few different mudroom spaces in our home and they’re among some of our most used, most loved rooms. They provide us with spaces to put things down when we arrive home, they give us somewhere to sit when we’re putting on our shoes, and they keep our things organized so we always know where to find a pair of mittens or a warm jacket when the weather suddenly turns. A functional mud room can be a simple DIY space, put together on an empty hallway wall with a few clever storage solutions, or it can be an elegant front entryway renovation with built-ins and custom cabinetry. Either way, I love a good mudroom and I always really enjoy seeing the ideas that people come up with for creating an area that is both functional and stylish. Here are some of my favorite mudroom ideas that I’ve come across, including a few ideas from our own home’s mudrooms.
Clever Crate Ideas in the Mudroom
Create an inviting impromptu mudroom with wooden crates on the floor.
…or installed on the wall of your foyer to hold wicker storage baskets.
I love these crate storage ideas because they’re affordable and available to anyone with a local craft store nearby. Simply paint or stain some unfinished crates and put them to use for instant farmhouse-style storage as shelves or cubbies for boots, baskets, books, or anything else.
An essential cleaning trick for DIYers: How to Remove Spray Paint From Skin
A Skinny, Space-Saving Mudroom Idea
Even if you’re short on space, create an extra-skinny mudroom organizer with just a few inches of depth. This mudroom features a row of hooks for hats, backpacks, handbags, and jackets, as well as a shelf for putting things down. Look for skinny magazine-rack-style baskets (like these) to hold extra items like toques, scarves, and pet gear.
Add instant farmhouse style charm to any room: Easy DIY Plate Rack with IKEA Ledges
Beautiful Custom Built-In Cubbies and Cabinets
If you have the time and the budget for remodeling, go completely custom with built-ins and a place for everything. This is one investment that you’ll never regret and this wall unit is as functional as it is beautiful.
More inspiring small-space organizing ideas for your home: The Best Built-In Storage Components for Custom Cabinetry
A DIY Mudroom From a Pre-Made Shelving Unit
Make a mudroom anywhere with a pre-made shelving unit from a big box store or the thrift store. Bookshelves are not hard to come by and can serve as an entire mudroom and command center with the addition of a few clever hooks and the removal of one of the shelves. Oh, the possibilities!
Affordable and sustainable room decorating ideas: Top Ten Thrift Store Home Decor Items You Should Never Pass Up
Lidded Benches Provide Clever Hidden Storage
Add lidded benches for extra hidden storage if you’d rather not see all the book bags, lunch pails, and lawn toys left out as visual clutter in the room. A hidden bench seat cubby provides a lot of storage space, and when you close the lid, everything virtually disappears.
An affordable renovating idea from our 120-year-old farmhouse: Beautiful Pine Flooring Using Basic Tongue and Groove Boards
A Multitude of Baskets to Hide Away the Clutter
This beautiful custom cabinetry unit allows you to hide everything in baskets. You can never have too many baskets and bins with a busy family to keep organized.
Do you know you can clean wicker? How to Properly Clean Storage Baskets
A Simple Shelf and a Row of Hooks
Sometimes a simple shelf and a row of hooks is all it takes to turn a wall with a little shoe cubby bench into an entire mudroom. Never underestimate the difference that adding an extra surface like a shelf or counter can make in a space.
Mini Closet Mudroom
Turn a coat closet into a mini mudroom! If you have an under-used coat closet near your front door that just becomes a cluttered mess, use the space more widely by removing the doors, and adding a bench, hooks, a shelf, and some decorative trim work for extra style.
My favorite simple millwork detail wall treatment: Inexpensive DIY Board and Batten Walls
A Large Garage Mudroom
A garage mud room can become a hub of storage lockers for daily life as well as utility items like garden tools and home repair items. The extra space in a garage allows for the creation of a much larger mudroom space than most interior rooms do. This is a perfect solution for large families or homes with a lot of sports equipment to organize.
A Mudroom, Laundry Room, and Home Office in One
..or why not create a mud room, laundry room, and office all in one? This large open-concept space truly does it all. What a great solution for family life. Backpacks can be organized and unpacked after school, homework can be completed, and laundry can be folded, allowing parents to oversee everything all at the same time.
Our Most-Used Mudroom Space
Pictured above: Washable Runner Rug | Similar Blue and White Umbrella Stand | Hyacinth Cubby Baskets | French Market Basket
Our home’s main mudroom is an addition we added to our old farmhouse several years ago. The space is entered through a door from the side porch, which, although not our actual front door, has really become our home’s main entrance. Here, we throw shopping bags down on the large benches, keys and sunglasses on the console table, and jackets on the long wall of hooks. The drawer units store shoes and lawn games, while the long runner makes the space cozy and welcoming.
See more of this space here: Timeless Farmhouse Mudroom Update
Our Back Hall Mudroom
Pictured above: Large Hyacinth Cubby Baskets | LL Bean Tote | Small Hyacinth Shelf Baskets | Favorite White Sneakers
This space is at the back of our house, and leads out to our back deck. This serves as kind of my own mudroom, and I keep most of my jackets and shoes back here, as well as all of our out-of-season coats, hats, mittens, and jackets. The wall of cabinetry serves as extra multi-purpose storage for back-up toiletry and medicine cabinet items, out of season home decor, and household linens.
See more of this space here: Our Back Hall Mudroom
I love that there are so many great ideas for things you can do to create a mud room, whether you want to do a quick afternoon project or something a little more involved. We actually have four different mudroom-type spaces in this house, with two of them mostly complete and two others that still need a lot of work, so there’s still a lot of mudroom potential in our little old house!
Do you have a favorite mud room project that you’ve completed at home?
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Courtenay Hartford is the author of creeklinehouse.com, a blog based on her adventures renovating a 120-year-old farmhouse in rural Ontario, Canada. On her blog, Courtenay shares interior design tips based on her own farmhouse and her work as founder and stylist of the interior photography firm Art & Spaces. She also writes about her farmhouse garden, plant-based recipes, family travel, and homekeeping best practices. Courtenay is the author of the book The Cleaning Ninja and has been featured in numerous magazines including Country Sampler Farmhouse Style, Better Homes and Gardens, Parents Magazine, Real Simple, and Our Homes.