Hallway Wall Organizers

We are a family of four living in about 2800 square feet which really should be more than enough space, but I find myself constantly trying to sqqquuueeeeeeeze more out of it. I admit, much of the blame is my propensity for “stuff”, specifically craft stuff and kitchen stuff, yet, I long for organization and space. Well, I am working hard to live a more clutter-free life. Buy less. Get rid of more. Repeat. But some clutter is hard to avoid when you have kids who go school and participate in a variety of activities and just plain exist. lol. Hallway Wall Organizers help me fight that.

One major source of clutter has been our large kitchen island because it’s a holder of all sorts of misc junk ranging from the daily mail, school papers, wallets, keys, chapsticks, just to name a few. You clean it up one day and it magically reappears the next day. Something neeeded to change.

I’d also been wanting to streamline our comings and goings for a while. Too often we’d be scrambling to find things like hats, gloves, sunglasses, keys, wallets, chargers, etc as we are heading out the door, often late. It was time to brainstorm storage ideas for our hallway. We had already put a bench there for ease of shoe putting on as we are a “no shoes inside household” which holds a minimal number of shoes and the girls’ “fashionista scarves”. lol.

I could have just bought one of these bench/shelf combos from the get go or one of these cool mudroom type benches but my pictures had already been hanging there for almost 10 years with no place to relocate to. So instead, next to bench, I added 2 baskets large enough to hold 2 backpacks each. The ones on the left are for the girls to share and the right one is for the hubby and me to share. Those work quite nicely, but it didn’t offer any kind of storage for “out-the-door” items. Then it came to me: hanging wall baskets! Cheap and easy. They were exactly what this area needed. But the trick was finding the right kind of baskets to hang and how to hang them. You saw what I did. Here’s how I did it:

Materials:

1. 4 Baskets (got mine at Target)
2. 4 Wall Hooks aka “Robe hooks” (got mine from Home Depot)
3. 2 wire coat hangers… I said YES wire coat hangers!!!
4. 4 Anchors and heavier duty screws (if you aren’t screwing them directly into a stud)
5. 1 spool of 3/8″ grosgrain ribbon (not pictured) and matching thread

Tools:

1. heavy wire cutters
2. plyers
3. tape measure or ruler
4. scissors
5. sewing machine or needle and thread

Figuring out how to hang the baskets was the tricky part. I just couldn’t find the right style of basket or hook to do exactly what I had envisioned, so I made my own hooks using wire coat hangers. They did the trick and I even added some swirlage to make it look fancier than just bent up coat hangers.

Coat hanger hooks:

1. Carefully straighten out the coat hanger using the plyers.
2. Cut 8 5.5″ – 6″ length pieces of coat hanger. I looked for the non-coated kind in a bronze-like color, to match the baskets. I dug into the hubby’s closet and snagged these.
3. Using the plyers, grab the very end of one of the coat hanger pieces and carefully bend it around the plyer tip. Based on the kind of plyer I used, this naturally gave me my initial 0.5″ center.
4. Keep bending until you have one full circle around your initial bend.
5. On the other end, measure out the length you need for the hook, in my case 1.25 inches and bend it out accordingly.
6. Voila! They actually look like quarter notes!

Next step: ribbon. Firstly, figure out what length you need, based on your baskets.

Ribbon:

1. Cut 4 pieces of 14″ long ribbon (or however long you need them to be)
2. Fold up ~1/2″ at ends and sew across to form a loop.
3. Fold ribbon in half and sew across at about 1/2″. I wanted to make mine a tight fit over the hook so they didn’t pop out easily.

And now, the basket hooks are ready to go!!!

Next, I enlisted the hubby to hang my hooks because I didn’t feel like doing it myself:

1. Measuring and marking out the hook positions (not actually pictured, lol)
2. Drilling holes for the anchors
3. Hammering the anchors in
4. Screwing in the hooks.

So, tada, we’re done! Ok, I skipped a few steps because I was so excited to get them hung, but I think you can figure out the rest.

Here’s a closeup of my swirly hooks, hooked into the hole/handle of the baskets. Look at them… hung perfectly angled for easy in and out.

So, even though we don’t have the room for one of those fantastical mud rooms, I guess I basically turned our hallways into one, by hanging coat hooks next to our garage entry door.

And another flanking my bench with wall baskets. Each person has their own basket to fill with whatever they see fit (mostly), like keys, wallets, sunglasses, hats, mittens, what-have-you. It’s been working like a champ and has help minimize our running into to the house with our shoes on looking for forgotten stuff. But, hopefully they don’t look too weird. lol.  

My kitchen island is less cluttered thanks this and some other organizing tactics but let’s see how long THAT lasts!

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Christine, aka happyvballgirl : )

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