Our garage leads directly into a teenie-weenie laundry room with no storage. I found some narrow cabinets on Amazon that worked very well. We also put up a coat rack. Is your dining room large? You may want to have some sort of elegant room divider to delineate the spaces, because you probably don't want your dining room looking like a storage room, too. Good luck!

consider getting a large dresser, find one cheap at a garage sale and paint it

I cannot put a dresser and even if I could, most don't have large enough compartments.

There is a bit of delineation with the shoe bench, but I can't put anything bigger as it would block the windows. It's a long room open on both the short sides..

A large chest or bench that can accommodate the backpacks and gear would be great, but not able to find anything.

You can't carve out a spot in the garage for their stuff? (When you say athletic gear, I'm thinking hockey and I wouldn't want that in the house. :))

What keywords have you used searching online? Have you tried credenzas and sideboards? Bookcases are usually narrow but most every other type of case good storage would have the depth you need. If the piece is too low, perhaps you could add legs.

Not hockey lol!! Protective gear for taekwondo, as of now. Other things like racquets etc are in the garage.

I don't have the space for a sideboard, and again, the individual compartments are small and don't accommodate the things am trying to fit.

Also may be adding some fencing related stuff, and I don't like storing these in the garage as the kids wear them

Maybe you can add shelving or compartments to a wall in your garage so they can drop their things before they enter your home.

Thanks, we will store most of the things in the garage, but school backpacks or things they need to wear, I want inside the house.

Taekwondo? Phew! Because hockey stuff is stinnnnnky. :P

Hm, you say you don't have space for a sideboard but the measurements you gave are similar to that of sideboards and credenzas I found when I was searching for an entry solution. Then, how about those thick canvas laundry bins I often see at HomeSense (HomeGoods in the US?)? Would something like that work? Or hooks in the garage for their athletic gear?

Showing us the spaces you have to work with might help us brainstorm. Let us know if you prioritize form over function or vice-versa.

ETA: Do they do their homework in the dining room? If not, then shouldn't their backpack follow them to their place of homework?

They do do homework there. We barely use the dining room for dining, just once a yr, and I sit my older one there so my younger one does not disturb him. I don't want a sideboard as it is taller than what I want, i have some space between the shoe storage and the bar cabinet and something low would work.

I use an old-school coffee table for this purpose. It is almost exactly the dimensions you describe. Bins can slide under to catch stuff like mittens etc and backpacks can pile on the top.

Personally I don't find chest-like furniture very useful for this type of purpose because inevitably the thing someone NEEDS NOW is on the bottom and everything else gets tossed onto the floor to find that thing. And if Mom isn't home when that tornado strikes, it can be quite some time before it all gets picked up. That's assuming no one else NEEDS anything in the meantime and strews it all further afield.

I would look at some storage in the garage instead of in the house then all you would need is a place for coats and shoes. There is no reason to have all that stuff brought inside.

Show a picture of this mess please?

Would something like Pottery Barn Kids' open market bins work? You could use them side by

side if you need more width.

I like lindsey's idea of a coffee table. You can buy an inexpensive one and paint it any colour you want. I was thinking of getting Ikea's Lack TV bench and covering it in removable wallpaper for my entry. Good luck! Hope you keep us posted with your progress. We all deal with organization issues at some point. It's nice to see how people solve their issues.

Patricia, surely you are not suggesting that I leave school backpacks outside?

It's not really a mess, instead leaning 3 or 4 backpacks against the wall, I was looking for a more elegant solution. Kids don't rummage through as each backpack is self contained and you would only take it out when you need it, finish your activity and out it back.

There is no big mess, just a few backpacks lying around making an obstacle course.

its nice when there is room for everything at the exactly correct spot, but sometimes it can't happen. do you have room for an armoire in the adjacent area? they are really cubbies with beautiful doors.

(my inlaws have an armoire in the foyer of their extremely posh manhatten apartment. the casual visitor would never have reason to believe it contains cans of tuna and boxes of ziploc bags.)

Is there no room under the table for the backpacks?

The dinning room connects to the kitchen and an overflowing tiny laundry room on one side and our main entryway on the other, so the kids would have to bring their stuff through the kitchen, into the breakfast area where I would have to do something similar.

Under the table is a good idea, I still would like something to put the backpacks in. I don't like books being kicked around.

I guess I just have to keep looking.

Buy a storage unit with four cubbies from a school supply company or from Ikea. Stand it so that the cubbies face up, not out. Drop a backpack in each cubby. https://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/00275848/

Respectfully, Rekha A, it does not sound like you are making the most out of your space. You are using the dining room for dining once a year. Maybe you'll want to think about converting it into a library/family room and using a breakfast nook or some other room as your dining room. I don't know how your house is laid out, but you say your laundry room is overflowing, too. I appreciate that your children are active in many sports, but they can't possibly need all of their sports equipment inside every day. The dimensions of the furniture you seek seems almost like a custom cabinetry purchase to me. This is from Ballard Designs; the other is from the Houzz store.

Thanks, a remodel is not in the cards right now. We have a study/library that the adults use as a home office. We have lots of space upstairs, but the stuff is left close to the entry way. Not everything is brought in, but the things that are, I need to keep them tidy.

The issue is that the entry is through the dining area. The cabinets you show will not fit a backpack.

What about a hope chest?

I'd recommend hooks, but my daughter pulled hers off the wall by shoving things around in the bag while it was still hanging. sigh.

I don't have any problem with your goal, but I am stumbling over the language -- you want a chest that opens from above? A chest of drawers? A set of cubbies that stuff can be stuffed into? Those are totally different searches, but none seems prohibitive...

If you can narrow down your vision, then it becomes easier to look for instances with the right dimensions, etc. Oh! this is a good one! maybe search for storage consoles!!

None of the above....a large chest that opens from above, like the hope chest suggested will so. Or a pretty open on the top crate will also do. It's the size that is the issue, sure there are available options for several hundred dollars, but did not find anything reasonable.

Most of the organizing solutions don't have large enough compartments.

I’m wondering why the idea of, essentially, a mock mud room in the garage is so ludicrous. Do you live somewhere very cold? Hooks/cubbies/ etc could potentially be literally a yard from where the stuff is now. We did this w an IKEA cubbies bookshelf and it worked fine. Backpacks fit. If you look on Pinterest for making entry ways where there isn’t one you can get lots of ideas. As my kids went into HS they usually took their backpacks into their rooms.

If you're OK w/ an open top, what about looking at planters? (either indoors or outdoors)

Maybe one per kid, of the square ones? Some are 16" wide, and kids can drop their backpacks in from the top. But they won't fall over or get kicked around. And since they're not so cavernous, stuff won't get lost as easy. They won't have to dig past other people's things, just theirs.

Of course, it's always space-saving to be able to build up, and an open-top planter won't let you do that.


But I do think that in real life, kids want to drop stuff down to the floor, not lift things up and set them on shelves.

Maybe try it out first w/ those $10 wooden crates from Michaels? Then you'll know whether it works, but you won't have spent a ton.

Artminds Wood Crate Carry-All at Michaels

If your garage is wide enough or deep enough, consider attaching lockable "lockers" to the wall of the garage for the athletic gear and other non-clothes items.

https://www.amazon.com/Merax-Storage-Locker-School-48-Inch/dp/B01GZZYMPW

Then, for coats, rather than a chest or bin for sweaters/coats (agree w/lindsey that they're inconvenient), add a coat rack to your dining room (one that goes well with the style bench you're using) --- or even two of them: a "his" and "hers" matched pair.

https://www.homedepot.com/p/MegaHome-Black-8-Hook-Coat-Rack-CR002/204690583

As you begin to use these items, make a new rule/tradition/habit: all book bags/backpacks go directly to the child's bedroom -- none get left in the living area of the house.

The closest item that comes to my mind is an over the fridge cabinet. They are available in similar sizes to your description. Another possibility is an old fashioned cedar chest. They are very reasonably priced from garage sales and used furniture shops.


My preference is always to hang backpacks. When my kids were young teens, the backpacks were ridiculously heavy, like a 30 lb backpack and a 100 lb kid. I ended up buying a section of white powder coated storage rack and using bicycle hooks to hang the backpacks. Those hooks were supposed to be 50 lb capacity and I never worried about pulling the rail out of the wall or bending the hooks. Typical coat hooks just aren't sturdy enough for backpacks and I hate to see the bags sit on the floor.

Regarding the "vertical cubby on the floor" idea that I suggested for the planters: I saw big baskets in Target today that made me think of you.

The very best thing that you can do is to retrain your kids to put their stuff away when they come in, rather than to drop it in the family room.

Do you have a dedicated place to keep things like sports gear, for instance? If not, maybe it would be a good idea to establish one, not in the family room at the door, and to actually require that they use it.

There is no reason that their backpacks and even their winter gear, cannot go into their rooms. How much further do they have to carry it to put it in their room?. If they can play sports and do martial arts, they can walk up the stairs or to the back of the house to their own room and deposit their own stuff right there.

If you had the space for it right inside the door, that might be a different story. But, you are saying that you do not have the space for a fixture to put the things in, so it seems that you don't have the space for the scattered things, either.

A place for their stuff, and their stuff in it's place. Apparently, right inside the door in the family room is not the desired place by anyone other than them.

Even if you were to put a chest of some kind right there I will wager to bet that it would still wind up all over the floor. And, the chest will still occupy space and have a circle of mess around it. They will just drop it on the top of the chest. If you put it in a bin, they will tear through it and still create a mess.

Insist that they take it to their rooms! Problem solved!

If there is no room for it there, there is, simply, no room. If the mess there is a problem, make it stop happening.

It is not an undue burden on them to require them to be responsible for their own things. It may require some threats and nagging, but they will learn that it is expected of them and they will be the better for it. I get the impression that your children are still young. That is a good time to train them in this area of responsibility.

Put some hooks in their rooms for the coat and the backpack. THAT is where their stuff should go.

If you had a mud room, or an off load room, it would be a different story, but you don't and no amount of configuring is going to create that space.

My SIL raised three sports dedicated boys who grew into big, boisterous, bruisers! She had a small entry space just inside the door and it always a messy obstacle course. She was always overwhelmed, they were always all unhappy and.............another story. Things were always a mess, starting right inside the door.