Making your entrance

What does your entrance way look like? When you arrive home after a long day, is it difficult to get in through the front door? I don’t only mean physically, I am talking emotionally as well!

Can you make an entrance?

When it’s time to go, can you just pick up and go or do you have to run around finding stuff before you can get out?

Having an organised entrance to your home is important not only for a smooth launching pad to get everyone out but also to make coming home something you want to do.

Whether you are using the front door or the back door to get in and out, these areas should welcome you or send you on your way as smoothly as possible.

Sometimes it is just a doorway and other times we have an entrance hall, however small it is, or a mudroom at the back which serves as your entry and exit points. Whichever you have, keeping it tidy just makes life easier.

Welcome home or not?

When you walk into a cluttered area filled with items dropped at the door, it is not welcoming. Chances are that walking into your front door can be depressing.

I know mine is. It has definitely improved since I first began blogging about getting organised. http://kasheringyourlife.co.za/the-launch/

I try and do the weekly decluttering tasks, to go along with these posts, so most of the messy before and neater after pictures are from my home.If they aren’t I will tell you where I got them from.

These tasks work whether you have fulltime domestic help or not. I know I have said it before but it bears repeating. Your help cannot know what you want to do with everything, even a hired consultant is going to need you to be present for at least the sorting phase of organising your home.

To make the first impression that people and you get of your home needs a little planning and sometimes a little ingenuity.

What goes here?

The space will often dictate what you need and so will your budget.

What is the space used for? Our entrance hall is for raincoats, umbrellas, winter scarves and gloves. I would love to be able to keep a basket for the keys there but it is too close to the front door and therefore a security risk.

If you have young children it is a place for shoes and school bags and tog bags to be dumped along with your handbag or briefcase.

The area becomes disorganised very quickly. I used to have a basket under my entrance hall table to collect such things, but my children are grown and this is no longer needed.

I love to have pictures up of the children as they grow, mine stopped allowing photos by the time they were 12!   I would love to do a family photoshoot to put up in the entrance.  I am not big on photographs and hardly ever appear in any but would enjoy doing this.

When setting up either the entrance or the back area, look at who comes in where and plan from there.

Do you have pets, where do you store their accessories, such as leashes? If I open the drawer to my entrance table, the dogs are there in a shot waiting to go for a walk.

The back door opening and closing, gets them rushing to see if there is food, even if they have just been fed!

Before you get started on organising, it is time to get rid of the clutter, organising clutter isn’t organising at all, believe me I know.

Entrance halls always work better with less items in them, you want to walk into a clean, uncluttered, organised space.

If you have a front porch, now would be a good time to clear the clutter from there as well.

Every item in your entry way must have a purpose for being there. Just remember that even a coat rack can become cluttered if you keep every single raincoat or jacket you own hanging up.

Cleaning up for this post I found school rain jackets from six years ago. There were even coats that I don’t recognise as belonging to us.

If the item does not belong in your entry way then move it to where it does belong, throw it out or donate it, whichever is appropriate.

Sadly this area accumulates all the things that people put down on their way in, so staying on top of the mess and clutter is a weekly if not daily task.

Please feel free to share your before and after pictures in the group https://www.facebook.com/groups/gettingsorted