Open for me: who needs the extra hassel of opening a door while trying to take your coat off?

Anything that actually encourages hanging things up v. laying them down [with every intention of hanging them up in just a couple minutes] gets my vote.

Our current mudroom is a total mess. My son and husband and I each have a bunch of shoes under the bench, a bunch of jackets on pegs and a bunch of hats and mitts shoved into our cubbies. Then there is the dog's cubbie, the sports equipment that gets shoved there etc etc. Even when it's all neatly placed, it looks crowded.

In the new house we decided to go with a closed in closet beside the bench and cubbies. The idea is to have just the stuff that is currently being used out in the open and tuck the rest away. We're an active family and I don't think it's necessary to hide that but if we can work at making it look a bit better I'm all for it.

Another thing we did is sheild the entry from the rest of the house this time. In our current open house I can see that mess all the time. I think just having it as neat as possible and then having it out of sight will be much better.

We have a mix and I'm thinking of removing the doors on the closed ones. It is more of a pain with hands full and stuff just doesn't seem to make it in there.

Hi Kate,

I was worried about this also. I vacillated between the 7' long coat closet which was in our original plan and replacing it with a cubbies. In the end, I decided to compromise and am planning for a 3.5' coat closet which I can close and 2 sets of open cubbies with lots of hooks and storage under and above for the boys. I'll let you know how it turns out in a few months... :)

Jaymie

I have an untidy DH and three boys who are obvious genetic links. OPEN is the only way to contain them. If they had to open doors (which all four would then LEAVE open) they would wander about the house dropping cubby-intended items in their paths, unable to make any sense of the oppressive and unnecessarily cumbersome system!

I'm doing open because for me the whole purpose is ease of access, and doors complicate that. I don't care if our mudroom looks messy... I'd rather have that be messy but USED than have stuff dragged into the rest of the house.

thank you. i don't know why i needed to question. obviously the xy's need very clear indicators or all goes out the window. it's always been my hope for them to reach a level of greater functioning ability. perhaps i am asking too much of them. open a door and put something inside? indeed it is i who needs to do better.

Yes, open cubbies will look messier, but IMO that's the point of the mudroom. So the mess is in there, and not the rest of the house. And from my experience, my kids' coats rarely get put on their hooks and they are in the open. I guarantee if they were behind doors they would never get hung up!

The problem with our mudroom is that the door to the mudroom is so close the door to the garage that when all four of us come in from the garage and want to go in the mudroom it's too crowded. Half the time we just kind of toss our coats in the general direction of their designated hooks so we can get out of the way and get the door to the garage closed. I don't know if that makes any sense at all.

Anyway, IMO the more accessible the coathooks are, the more likely that coats will actually get hung on them.

I agree with OPEN. One thing I wish I would've had the room for is a closet (closed) right beside my open shelving for things like hats/gloves/mittens, odds and ends, etc. Seasonal items or things you don't need every day.

midwestmom,
I have the exact same problem! It is frustrating trying to get in the door and get everyone out of the way in order to close the door, then get everyone to come back and deposit their 'things', LOL. But I love having that space. My mudroom 'cubbies' are only 4' long. It is all open, hooks for jackets and keys, 2 sets of stacked cubbies above with outlets for charging cell phones. Under the bench I have it divided into 2 open areas for shoes. I originally used containers, but the containers have to be pulled out and pushed in, so I abandoned tidy containers and went with open space. Works much better!

my mud rooom is visible from the kitchen. having lived with this for a while i realize that there are pros and cons and you should listen to your gut feeling what you can tolerate as far as mess. The pro is that it looks great when it is all staged and tidy.Ideally the mudroom should be purely for function and open hooks are more functional. I actually rely on mine perform aesthetic duties.If I had to do it again I would have hidden the mud room better. As it it is I've signed myself up for a long term battle. In the summer I am moving the function of the mudroom out to the garage it is attached to, I can't stand the mess being so visible and it is annoying as heck to my husband that he cant leave his snowblowing pants on the hook all the time.