What’s welcoming you in your entrance hall?

Entrance halls can make such wonderful impressions when you first enter a home. How often do you hear the comments from house hunters how inviting the home is when then first step in? How dreadful can a cluttered entrance hall be for you when you come back after a long and exhausting day at work? This weekend, tackle your hallway and create that welcoming feeling in 5 easy steps.

1. Hang up the coats. Unless you’re lucky to live in this region, you’ll have to wear a coat at some stage of the year. In the UK, it appears to be almost year-round nowadays.

Depending on the size of your family, a coat stand may not be sufficient anymore and a row of coat hooks may be more appropriate. I’m a big fan of giving each family more than just one hook: One on a higher level and one on a lower level. Children who can’t reach the higher ones could get two hooks at the lower level and can hang up their coats themselves.

2. Limit the number of shoes out. Ladies, we love our shoes. I get that. Yet, the entrance hall does not need to be your display area. Decide on a number of shoes you can keep out while the others are nicely stored in a shoe cabinet, on shoe shelves, in a clear shoe box or a shoe ottoman and so on.

As a try, let’s get every family member to only have 3 pairs in the entrance hall. Many children (and adults) just kick their shoes off when coming home. There’s no left shoe goes with the right shoe and are placed neatly in parallel. If that’s your home, you may want to have even less shoes out.

3. Create a display for your handbags and hats. Similar to shoes, handbags and hats can take over this world or at least the entrance hall. Limit the number of handbags you keep there. Isn’t it easier to have them close to your wardrobe? When you’re trying on your outfits, you can quickly pick up the different handbags and decide which one to wear with your outfit.

For the ones you leave in the entrance hall, you can place your handbags on a side table, hang them on the coat hook (be careful that it doesn’t damage the handles) or put them in a basket which you can keep underneath a chair.

Hats can be a wonderful piece of decoration. This also goes for baseball hats. You can place them on the coat hook while fascinator should be displayed with the proper support from underneath. You don’t want it to lose its glamour. A glass cabinet may be a beautiful place.

4. Set up a toy basket for your kids. Toys just like sports equipment can quickly fill up the entrance hall. Give a basket for each of your kids (this may include adult children, too). When they come home, they can dump their toys, tennis racket or football in it. In the evening or whenever you are doing your “clean up for the day”, have each kid take their basket and put the contents where they belong. The football may need to go into the garage while the toys back in the kids’ room. This is also a fabulous way of teaching children responsibility from early on and older siblings can help their younger ones, too.

5. Organise your keys. “Have you seen my keys?” If I got a dollar for every time I heard that question, I could buy myself something very nice by now! Whether you have a bowl, a wall key holder or you throw them in a drawer, there are plenty of ways to keep your keys organised.

It should be the place where you always look for them and it should be easy to find, if you forget the first part of this sentence. Yes, for one of my clients, throwing their clients and spare change into the top drawer of their cupboard in the hall way is the most natural place for them. Pick a location that works for you and your family.

In my home, there are 3 shoes per person out. One of these is a pair of house shoes as I’m not a big fan of walking around the house with shoes worn on the street. These house shoes are only worn inside the home and it’s amazing how much cleaning this reduces. That’s why people are getting organised I was once told. It’s because they’re lazy and don’t want to do extra work. I certainly don’t want to clean more than I need to and not having to look for keys, experiencing that stress, is another benefit!

Tell me next week which changes you’ve made to your entrance hall over this weekend!

Until next time,
Agni