In many houses, the hallway is the space most prone to clutter. It is the central space that connects your other rooms together, which makes it easy to put things down and forget about them as you pass you through. The hallway is often used to store shoes, coats, and other pieces of outdoor gear, which tend to accumulate and take up a lot of room. Where the hallway is connected to the front door, letters, packages, and other deliveries might also build up, and some people store vacuum cleaners or other household devices in the hallway because these items do not have a strong association with one particular room.
Hallways are often small, and they need to provide enough room for you to move through, so it is important to keep them free of clutter. However, this lack of space also makes it difficult to install extra storage, like shelves or cupboards. Storage options for a hallway should also be convenient – the main reason to keep shoes and coats in the hallway, for example, is because you can access them quickly on your way out of the door.
While it may be challenging to meet these requirements, it is important to maintain a tidy hallway wherever possible. This can create a calm and peaceful atmosphere to welcome you home after a long day and set the right tone to greet visitors. Your hallway is likely seen by everyone who visits your home and will create a strong first impression, even if you personally treat the space as an afterthought.
Here, the storage professionals at Clever Closet will offer five suggestions that can help you to add more space, keep things organized, and ultimately enjoy the benefits of a clean and tidy hallway.
1. Combine decoration with storage.
If untidiness is a recurring problem in your hallway, you can start by thinking about the fundamentals of the space and what you need it to do. Decorating with storage in mind can create the space you need while also making your hallway more attractive at the same time.
One solution is adding pieces of furniture hidden with storage compartments, enabling them to achieve multiple functions. For example, a stylish bench seat with built-in storage space will not only make your hallway look attractive to guests and create a comfortable place to sit but also be used to store scarves, gloves, unopened letters, packages, and other small items that can otherwise clutter a hallway.
This is effective only if your hallway has enough room to add more furniture. We will explore this below and offer a solution that can create more organized storage space without taking up more room in the hallway.
2. Think about aesthetics
If making your hallway tidy is more about how it looks than how it functions, you can take an aesthetic approach, and using attractive furniture to create storage is not the only solution. You may be able to make things look tidier simply by arranging them differently, and there are lots of ideas to help you achieve this.
Sometimes, a small change can make a big difference to how a space looks and give the impression that it is properly organized. For example, if your coat rack looks untidy, you could try sorting coats according to their color to instill a sense of intention or hang them further apart from each other to make things look more balanced.
There are lots of creative suggestions online to help you maximize your use of space in ways that look attractive. You should also consider how easily you will be able to sustain these solutions before choosing the right one – while sorting items into organized piles can quickly transform a space, but without a more permanent solution, these piles will start to look cluttered again very quickly.
3. Store things on a seasonal basis.
The problem in your hallway may not be because you are disorganized but because you are trying to store too many things in too small a space. For example, even if a shoe rack is properly organized and fulfils its function by keeping all of your shoes together, it may look untidy if things are crowded together.
One solution is to rotate items based on when you need them. Generally, a shoe rack does not need to hold everything from wellington boots to flip-flops all year round. Instead, put winter clothes away in a wardrobe in another room until the weather cools down. This also applies to other seasonal items like umbrellas, hats, and sunglasses and is an opportunity to sort through the things you don’t wear very often – it might be that some of these things can be donated or thrown away.
4. Find creative ways to add more storage.
If your clutter is not caused by coats, shoes, or other seasonal items, or you find that the hallway is still untidy with these items put away, the other solution is to add more storage space. This can be difficult in a small hallway, where the types of hidden storage listed above may not be suitable.
The best option in these cases is usually an under-stairs storage solution, which takes advantage of space that is otherwise unused to create an organized system hidden beneath your staircase. There are several advantages to this type of solution: it can create a lot more storage without taking up any more room in your hallway and enables you to separate items by theme or function to keep everything organized. It also maintains the convenience of having everything you need easily accessible near your front door.
5. Pursue DIY solutions
There are many nifty storage solutions that are designed to meet specific requirements or address particular problems, and in many cases, you can build or install these yourself. For example, mounting hooks on the wall to store your keys can make hallway surfaces look much tidier and save the space that a bowl would otherwise occupy, and it is also relatively easy to install.
If you have identified a particular source of clutter that is primarily responsible for the challenges you are facing in your hallway, you can also search online to find a specific solution. In many cases, you will find clever and creative innovations developed by people facing the same issues you are having, and these can inspire you to implement something similar. By working to tackle the specific causes of clutter in your home and following the advice provided here, you will be able to develop better habits and maintain a clean and tidy hallway for the long term.