Organized Coat Storage for a Small Coat Closet

Tidy up a small coat closet by getting creative with organized coat storage! See how we created our mini mudroom in this post!

When we moved into our house over six years ago, I put everything where it was “supposed” to go. I put the coats in the coat closet. I put my baking stuff and dry goods in the pantry. We packed the storage areas in our garage and basement with Rubbermaid containers full of all of our extra junk. I followed the “rules” of the house.

As we’ve lived here longer and longer though, I’ve realized that sometimes the function an area is assigned is not always the way it functions best, so we have changed things around, flip-flopped different areas, and tried different arrangements to try and make our not-so-big house work in the best possible way for us.

Never has this been more evident than when we started to renovate our kitchen. As we try to figure out the best arrangement for everything, we have found ourselves experiencing a little bit of a snowball effect. (Isn’t that always what happens with projects?!)

Rethinking Our Kitchen and Entry Space

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It first began with the pantry. When I couldn’t include the tall cabinet that I wanted to provide more storage space, we started to get more creative with the areas close to the kitchen, and the “kitchen reno” kind of became a revamp of the whole front of the house. Oops.

I showed this graphic when I shared our powder room refresh a few days ago, but just as a reminder, here’s the layout we’re working with:

To create the pantry space we needed, we took the entry coat closet and turned it into our new pantry. That left a whole bunch of coats without a home and the old pantry (which is super tiny) completely empty.

I was fine with sacrificing coat storage in this space in favor of pantry storage, especially since we enter our house through the garage rather than the front door 99% of the time. We still had to do something with the coats though, so that’s where the creativity came in.

I wanted to make sure we had at least a little bit of coat storage on the main floor in case we’re running out the front door for some reason or if guests come over, so we decided to turn the old pantry into a little mini mudroom!

Turning a Small Pantry into a Mini Mudroom

Here’s how the old pantry started out waaaaaaaaay at the beginning of the kitchen reno:

It was fairly organized (thanks to a hidden overflow area where we stashed the rest of our junk!). But the shelves were super shallow, and no matter how many times I organized and shifted things around, there was just no way it could meet our needs as the sole pantry space.

So we ripped out the existing shelves to make room for the coats. Donnie cut down some inexpensive MDF 1x4s to fit the space. And so that the transition between the wall and the MDF wasn’t so abrupt, he used a miter saw to cut the end of the boards at a 45 degree angle.

He installed the 1x4s in two rows in the little nook using a brad nailer, added some hooks, and our tiny former pantry-turned-mini mudroom was ready for some coats!

The size of this little nook actually ended up being perfect. The boys have hooks at their level so that they can hang their items with ease, and Donnie and I can store our stuff on the top row.

I also added a little basket at the bottom to catch all of the shoes that we always seem to have floating around the entry area and living room. Little Caleb’s new favorite thing to do is run into the house, pull off his shoes, and throw them in the basket– it’s the little things! 🙂

Supplemental Storage for Extra Coats

But what about the rest of our coats? Oooohhhhh, don’t worry. I had a plan for those too. 🙂 Right when we come into our basement from the garage, there is an under-the-stairs nook that just happened to be the perfect size for a coat rod!

Since this is the way we enter and exit the house most of the time any way, it made so much more sense to have the majority of our coats and boots in this area so that we could discard them without having to drag them through the main part of the house. I think it will save me a ton of snow cleanup this winter– yippee!!

Organizing a Small Coat Closet: Final Thoughts

I am totally kicking myself that it took me six years of living in this house to think of this solution! It makes so much more sense than the setup we had before, and it is already more functional for our family, too.  

This big closet swap really has helped open my eyes to see that just because a space is “supposed” to be used for one purpose doesn’t mean it functions best that way. I will definitely be thinking more outside the box when it comes to organizing our space moving forward!

Now that we have the pantry sorted out and the coats have a home again, there are just a few more details we need to finish up in the kitchen before it is complete!

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[Psssstttt… Find our top 100 tips and tricks for organizing every room of your house here!]

Have you ever gotten creative with space in your home to make it more functional?

We’ll be back with more updates soon! Have a wonderful day!

This post contains affiliate links. For more information, see my disclosures here.