8 Organized Entryway Essentials

Create an organized entryway that’s both practical and beautiful so that entering and leaving the house can happen quickly and easily!

Entryways tend to be magnets for clutter. It’s so tempting to walk in the door and just drop everything we happen to be holding in the entry to be dealt with “later.”

But a cluttered, unorganized entry can turn into a big problem when we can’t find what we need as we’re heading out the door. The mess can easily cause frustration and wasted time.

After years of studying, tweaking, organizing, and decluttering our own entry, I have found several essential elements that have helped us keep our entryway as tidy as possible.

8 Entryway Organization Ideas to Save Your Sanity

This post contains affiliate links. For more information, see my disclosures here.

Our current house has two “entries,” a small area when you come in the front door, and a mudroom entry from the garage. Though everyone’s entry area will be different, hopefully these tips and tricks will be helpful no matter what size entry you’re dealing with.

1. Add a storage piece for an organized entryway.

Everyone’s exact needs will be different due to the size and layout of their entryway, but most entry spaces can benefit from an added piece of storage furniture.

The area just inside our front door is pretty small, but I was able to find a narrow cabinet (similar) that was a perfect fit.

One half of the cabinet holds items we might need as we’re heading out the door like sunscreen and bug spray.

I had found that my boys were always running upstairs to grab crayons and markers from their playroom for school projects. So I saved them a trip by creating a small portable art station on the other half of the entry cabinet.

2. Make it easier to hang items in the entry with hooks.

One of my biggest rules for getting everyone in the house on board with staying organized is that the easier it is for people to put things away, the more likely they’ll be to do it.

As far as hanging things goes, hooks tend to be easier for people than hangers. With hooks, items can be hung with one hand. This is helpful in the entry since our hands are often full when we come into the house.

We installed hooks in our mudroom to make the chances higher of my boys hanging their jackets and book bags rather than just throwing them on the floor.

We typically keep the jacket that each boy wears most often each season on their hook. Then we leave the rest of their coats in the closet so that the hooks don’t become too cluttered.

3. Bring in baskets to organize shoes.

When I first organized our entry closet, my plan was for us to set our shoes in neat rows on shelves I had installed for that purpose.

Whenever I made that plan, I forgot to take into account that I have tween boys who have probably never set anything in neat rows in their lives! As a result, our entry closet shoe situation often looked like this:

Clearly I needed a new system! I ended up bringing in one un-lidded basket for each boy, and now they will kick their shoes into the baskets where they are neatly corralled, rather than making a mess in the closet.

4. Make hats, gloves, and scarves easy to put away.

Remember our rule about making items as easy to put away as possible? It applies to accessories too!

I originally kept our winter hats, gloves, and scarves up on a high shelf in our entry closet. But not only could my boys not reach them there, they were also a pain for me to get down and put away!

Instead, I ended up putting some bins in our mudroom drawers. And now our winter accessories are easy for everyone to reach.

(Want to make your own cute winter hat? I love this how to crochet a hat tutorial for beginners!)

If you don’t have spare drawers that could be used for this purpose, hanging an organizer within reach on the back of the closet door or on the wall in the closet could work too.

5. Use matching hangers.

Call me type-A, but I think closets look so much tidier when all of the hangers are the same, rather than having a mismatch of types and styles.

I use white wood hangers in our entry closet and they have held up well for us.

6. Add a command center in the organized entryway.

One of the items we tend to just drop in our entryway most often is paperwork. Whether it’s our kids’ school papers or the mail, we often don’t have a designated spot for it in our home, so it’s all too easy to throw it on the nearest flat surface.

For this reason, it’s helpful to have a command center with an in/out box system in the entryway so that paperwork has a tidy place to land until you’re ready to process it.

When we process our paperwork, we store all of our documents digitally with an app called Evernote. You can get all of the details of our paperless process here.

Some other helpful elements that could be included in a command center are:

• magnet board or cork board
• clock
• calendar
• whiteboard or chalkboard for family announcements and/or meal planning
• basic office supplies

7. Install hooks at kids’ height for activity bags.

When our kids got old enough to start sports and activities, it felt like our house became completely inundated with gear!

Some of the larger gear– hello, hockey equipment— was relegated to the garage. But for smaller items, like the boys’ swimming stuff and jiu jitsu gear, I put together tote bags to keep them organized. These bags were then hung on hooks at the boys’ level so they could easily grab them and go when it was time for practice.

The swim bag was a little bulky, so I added a hook for it inside the entry closet, which has worked well.

The boys’ jiu jitsu bags are smaller, so they were able to hang on the little hooks that came with our command center’s magnet board.

8. Make the organized entryway pretty.

This one may not seem like an organizational tip, but I assure you that it is! I have found that when I love how our spaces look, I’m more motivated to keep them looking that way!

This means I’m more likely to hang up my coat and purse instead of throwing them on the floor. I’m more likely to deal with paperwork rather than just setting it down haphazardly. And I’m more likely to put things back where they go rather than putting them on the nearest flat surface.

A few things we’ve done in the entryway to make it look prettier is to paint the insides of the doors…

(The color is Sherwin Williams Rainwashed.)

Replace the light fixtures…

(Our pendant lights are similar to these.)

And add decorative accessories…

Find even more small entryway makeover ideas here!

Along with being motivation to keep our entryway organized, it’s also nice to be welcomed home by a pretty space as you walk in the house! And when we enjoy our surroundings, there’s definitely no place like home!

Join me for Get Organized HQ!

You’re invited to the biggest organizing party of the year! Get Organized HQ is a [FREE!] virtual organizing summit that is being held September 12-16, 2022.

There will be more than 100 organizing classes being offered, covering everything from organizing spaces to time management to organizing finances, meal planning, and more.

Some of the biggest names in the online organizing space will be presenting at Get Organized HQ, including…

• Nikki Boyd from At Home with Nikki
• Ruth Soukup from Living Well, Spending Less
• Crystal Paine from Money Saving Mom
• Jordan Page from Fun, Cheap, or Free
• Cas Aarssen from Clutterbug
• And many more!

I am so delighted to be teaching a class on organizing your life with Evernote!

We’d love to have you join us for this incredible organizing event. Click here to save your seat for free!

Hope to see you there!

What is your most helpful trick for creating an organized entryway? Let me know in the comments!

And if you want to come back to these ideas later, make it easy by pinning the image below!

Thanks so much for following along! Have a wonderful day!

This post contains affiliate links. For more information, see my disclosures here.