Comings and Goings

today's sunrise. 

Assignment #14.

Create a Landing Strip.

The idea, of course, is to have a place near your exits and entrances for all the stuff that finds its way into your home, no matter who brings it in.

This is a multi-faceted problem. Let's take this systematically.

The Front Door.

Who uses it?

Myself and the kids.

What comes in? (What do you need a place for?)

1) Boots and shoes

2) Coats, Jackets (Personal items like scarves, hats and gloves are stored in the coat pocket and/or sleeve.)

3) Papers my son delivers once a week

4) mail

5) my purse and my daughter's backpack


What goes out?

6) outgoing mail

7) library books to be returned

8) things to be returned to various people

What do we need to store? 

1-8

What have we got?

A narrow hallway right by the front door and around a corner,  a wider hallway with a coat closet. Let's take it in turn.

By the front door we have the carpet for boots, the small wooden child's chair for all sorts of things (currently holding my son's papers. When I am getting ready to leave for work in the morning I put my purse and lunch kit on it. Sometimes, it is a place to put my purse down so I can get my boots off.) The child's chair is in the entrance arch to the living room. Across from it is the doorway to the dining room/home office.

That shelf is mostly decorative, but it does hold outgoing mail at the moment. The bin underneath it holds some library books and a bag of borrowed items to be returned to its owner.



Around the corner is really where the hard work happens.

yes, the two hallways are different colours. That will likely be changed during the Spring One Room Challenge in April.

That dresser (and the calendar above) is command central. School papers which need signing go into my folders--and then get returned to the kids' folders. (Well, that supposed to be how it works. In my son's case, he tends to give them to me right when he comes home from school and immediately retunrs them to his back pack. My daughter wakes me up the morning they are due and frantically waves a pen in my face. We're working on it.) My husband and I also have our own folders. I highly recommend that everyone in a household have a place like this for their own papers.

We collect grocery and gas receipts (separate from our other receipts) so there are envelopes to catch them set up here, too.


One drawer in this dresser is devoted to hats, mitts and scarves, year round. I go through and purge it in the fall. (This way, too, if I do find the odd hat or glove lying around, I have a place to put it without having to find its owner or her coat.)

The coat closet also doubles as a broom closet, so I have all sorts of things here. Most importantly, it is the home for our coats, bags we use to take to the grocery store, bags we re-use, empty backpacks and my purse.

The Back Door.

This is the way to the back yard and the garage.

Who uses it?

Mostly my husband, the dog, sometimes me and the kids.

What comes in?

My husband and his workboots (which he likes to change out of before he goes out to play with the dog), his lunch bag and book bag. Groceries. dirty, filthy dogs paws.

What goes out?

All of the above, plus, in summer, sports stuff.

What do we need to store?

In addition to the above, I need access to gardening supplies, (gloves, a hat, secateurs, and a trowel), a table cloth and roasting forks.

What do we have to work with?

A teeny tiny entry way, and stairs going up to the kitchen and down to the basement.

The shoe pocket organizer holds mostly mosquito repellant and odd bits at the moment. The drawer underneath holds things we won't need until summer.

First, the stairs leading up to the kitchen.

On the left wall, a strip of wood with cup hooks holding keys and the dog's leash. On the right, a towel bar with the long shoe horn and a rag both for the dog's paws and my husband's boots. On the ledge, the spray bottle is to discourage the Beagle's barking. (On the floor to the left is a bucket with cleaning cloths to be taken to the basement laundry room.) Those are my husband's work boots and winter boots/shoes on the stairs.

As you go down the stairs there's boot shelf with a curtain rod above it on the right.

Those sandals are being held up by a bent hanger, the boots by a hanger clip. Sandals and keds live in the pink magazine holders. Beneath the shelf are hooks for bike helmets and a bag holding fishing gear.

Opposite this are the baskets, also suspended from the flooring joists.

They hold hats, summer work gloves, ball mitts and rollar blades and knee pads. They've held all sorts of sports equipment through the years.

(That mess underneath the baskets belongs to the epic basement clean up project which is next month!)

As far as curing goes, I dusted the navy shelf, cleaned off the top of the white dresser, and sorted through the paper work. I decluttered the baskets at the back door, vacummed the magazine/shoe holders and the wire baskets. Then I washed the walls and swept and washed the stairs. I vacuumed the hallway and the coat closet floor, too. Yep. I'm tired.

So, there we have it. I think I've covered how we --and all our stuff-- come and go.

Any questions? I'll answer in the comments.