We use our back door as our main door. It opens right into the kitchen and dining area. There is no closet there. We have a coat closet, but it's in the living room, which is too far to go to drop your stuff. By the back door we had a small rack with a shelf, but then we had kids, who keep having things like coats, shoes, backpacks, hats, gloves, umbrellas, sunscreen, etc.
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| Before kids: aww look how simple and cute! |
As with most everything in the house, I looked around for something that had as much functionality as possible. I found a coat rack with a wire shelf that looked perfect:
Wire Shelf With Coat Rack
I thought I could stack two of them on the wall, one for adults and one for kids. But because I'm short, I couldn't put the adult one too high, and there wasn't enough room for the bottom one. My husband spray-painted the rack turquoise, to match the yellow/turquoise theme of the kitchen. I happened to find a wire shoe rack for free on the side of the road, so I nabbed that and painted it turquoise too. I found a small IKEA coat rack at a thrift store, and screwed that in down low for the girls to put their coats.
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| The entire "closet". On top we have bins full of hats, gloves, sunscreen, umbrellas, rain ponchos, etc. |
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| The small IKEA rack that holds the girls' things. |
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| The shoe rack, which holds bins with the girls' shoes, and various bags and junk. |
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| Up top, I got some wire S hooks to hang bags and scarves. Sunglasses and umbrellas hang here easily. |
It's a small space. You could probably wall in a closet, or get a wardrobe or a covered garment rack. I like the openness of it because it makes it easy for the kids to put up their things and get them down again. It's functional! As our family grew...so did our coat rack.
