Organizing Your Mud Room: Storage Solutions and Décor Ideas

Pay attention to the way doors swing. If the open door blocks your storage space, you’ll have trouble grabbing items to go and putting them away when you return, Bell says. “If your storage is on the wrong side of the door, it may deter you from maximizing that potential,” Bell says. Niki Bell's mud room includes lockers with no doors and hooks with each family members' initials. Photo credit: Niki Bell Ideally, any storage container including closets, bins and cubbies should be no more than 75 percent full. If your main coat closet is too crowded, thin it out by adding a coat rack or hooks for the coats you wear most often. Your walls can yield more storage space. “People forget to use their walls,” Dansky says. Use wall units for mail and paperwork. Hang coats, purses, backpacks and umbrellas on hooks. Containing Mud The first defense to contain mud is to have a shoes-off home, Danksy and Bell say. Shoe racks will store shoes you don’t need until you’re ready to walk out the door and house slippers or socks for when you come home. A rubber grooved or metallic walk-off mat can rid shoes of mud, snow and water even in the worst climates, says Chris Davis, president and chief executive officer of the World Floor Covering Association in Anaheim, Calif. Floor It Choosing the right flooring will make a big difference in keeping your mud room clean. “You want to get away from any floor that’s going to be difficult to clean or doesn’t like water, especially if you’re in an area where it rains or snows a l Installing a storage organizer system is easy! Check out our How To Video with step-by-step instructions. ot,” Davis says. Tile might sound like an obvious choice, but it’s cold on bare feet. “If you’re in a mud room where you’ll take your boots off, you don’t want that kind of coldness underfoot,” he says. A high-end vinyl floor is warmer, easy to clean and can blend in with the flooring in the rest of your home. “If you have a home that has wood floors, go with a vinyl product in a plank or sheet that looks like wood,” Davis says. “There are some incredible vinyl products that you can’t tell aren’t wood. You can get a luxury vinyl product that looks like tile or like anything and yet it’s easy to clean.” Cleaning a vinyl floor is as easy as using a damp mop or rag. With the right mud room setup, you’ll be ready for spring showers, winter blizzards and the flood of papers that comes in your door every day.

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