Spring Organizing with Great Day Connecticut: Mudroom

Week 4 of our Spring Organizing Series, as seen on WFSB-TV’s Great Day Connecticut.

We shared several of our projects with Great Day Connecticut as part of our Spring Organizing Series collaboration to showcase how we organize main living spaces in the home. Watch part one and part two of the segments below, to see how we organized the space along with our best tips and tricks that apply to any home. In Week 4, we’re touring the mudroom.

Mudroom Organization

In Week Four, we’re taking a tour through this functional, beautiful mudroom project. We discuss drop-zone/command centers as well as typical mudroom contents, including systems and solutions that work well in these spaces (no matter what yours looks like!)

The mudroom is arguably one of the most used spaces in a home. It’s typically located near your most common entrance, and it corrals shoes, bags, coats, and other everyday items. Because of this, it can also be the most chaotic. The mudroom has a huge impact on our daily routines - it's the last place we stop before heading out the door and the first place we see at the end of the day. So, a disorganized mudroom means frantic mornings searching for essentials and stressful evenings with nowhere to unload. But with the right system, your daily experience in this space can be seamless.

Drop-Zone or Command Center

The Drop-Zone or Command Center is the grab-and-go area of your mudroom. This area can be setup in a drawer, cabinet, or even by taking advantage of counter space (using a desktop organizer) or a wall-mounted system. Supplies that are typically found in this space include:

Car keys
Sunglasses
Some tech things like a charger or headphones
A few personal products like gum, mints and chapstick
Incoming and outgoing mail
Some bill pay and mail supplies like a checkbook, envelopes, and stamps
Some pens and paper
Important school and life documents that you need to reference
Family calendar

Key systems and materials include:

In-Drawer Organizers will corral the small categories like car keys, sunglasses, tech stuff, cords and personal products. An alternative to the in-drawer system shown in this segment could be a tray or bowl on your counter.
A system for billpay- We like to keep a checkbook, some stamps, writing utensils and scratch paper in a drop-zone for those times in the morning when you’re heading out the door and you realize bookfair money is due.
A system for mail- We love using upright sorters keep envelopes, outgoing mail, and incoming mail sorted and contained. The key with incoming mail is to take care of the mail immediately; we know it’s not always top priority, but if you take just a minute or so each day to discarding or shredding the junk, filing what needs to be filed, and then putting aside that mail that needs requires action and keeping it in a place where you’ll take action, it will prevent the mail clutter from compounding.

Paper Trays/Sorters- The same type of system and priority for mail goes for important school and children’s papers. We love using stackable trays (one for each child preferably) so that finding and referencing documents is easy

A family calendar- This family has an amazing wall-mounted digital calendar, but a whiteboard or physical calendar is also just as effective. The key here is having it visible, available, and updated so that everyone’s on the same page. Another option if the members in your household all have devices is creating a family calendar with everyone’s synchronized schedules on it.

Tip: Remember to edit this area regularly. When it starts to feel a little full and things seem out of place, it’s time to re-home the items that don’t belong. Take out the crumpled up receipts, random safety pins and paper clips.

Mudroom

When mudrooms are properly organized, we experience things like mornings without the mad dash to find essentials, afternoons where kids know exactly where to put their backpacks, and evenings when you can unload your day without creating piles of clutter. A well-organized mudroom doesn't just look better - it actually streamlines your entire routine. While every home’s mudroom looks different. For some, it’s a wall; for some, it’s a closet; and for some, it’s a really functional dedicated room with built-ins or lockers, but no matter what yours looks like, they all revolve around the same organizing principles.

Coats and Bags

Bags and in-season coats are stored often on hooks. Hook placement should be strategic, meaning you want your hooks at a height where different family members can access them, so If there are young children in your home, consider placing a few hooks their level. If your mudroom is a closet, jackets and coats can be placed on hangers with rows or columns of hooks on the interior side of the doors or interior walls.

Accessories

For accessories like hats, gloves, scarves and other items, the name of the game here is containment. Whether you’re storing your accessories in a drawer like this or on a shelf, these types of supplies are best organized in bins or baskets. Opaque bins work best because they can hide the visual clutter while still keeping things organized.

In the mudroom shown in the segment, each type of accessory has its own dedicated bin for every member of the family, but a few other options based on the size of your mudroom is one bin for each member of your household, or one bin per type of accessories (all hats in one, all gloves in another, etc). The bins or baskets create and provide a physical boundary, and keep your supplies in check.

If you’re tight on space, you can try seasonal rotations of your accessories, placing only in-season accessories in the mudroom, and storing away out-of-season ones.

Labels

Just like every space we organize, labels really do make all the difference. When everyone knows exactly where their items belong, keeping things organized becomes a habit. This small detail is often what turns an organized space into one that actually stays that way.

Shoes

This family’s everyday shoes are mostly stored between the garage and a nearby closet, but other options include using a boot tray, baskets, or cubbies to keep footwear under control. We also suggest limiting the amount of shoes per household member kept in this area, and really just your typical everyday shoes that you’re reaching for on a regular basis. This keeps things from getting crowded and helps the system work better. If you have the available space, try giving each person their own shoe bin.

Grab-and-Go

Like all families, getting out the door with your family is a mad dash most days. So if you have the space, you can use a bin or basket to store daily and/or seasonal essentials like a hairbrush and detangler spray or sunblock and bug spray to prevent additional trips upstairs. Group similar items together, and don’t shy away from storing categories that are niche to your family. The main thing here is having these items ready when you need them, so you're not scrambling at the last minute.