Entryway and hallway
Whether or not you have one. The first two metres of a home take the whole day's worth of shoes, post and bags, and most homes have never decided where any of it goes.
What usually goes wrong here
No landing place for keys and post
If there is nowhere obvious, everything lands on the nearest flat surface, which is usually the kitchen.
Storing every shoe by the door
Only the current season needs to be there. The rest is why the hall never looks clear.
Assuming you need a hallway
A hook, a tray and a basket work against a wall, in a corner, or on the back of the front door.
- Decluttering
Entryway Organisation When You Do Not Have a Hallway
How to stop the front door area becoming a pile of shoes and coats when there is no actual hall, using vertical space and one hard rule.
- Decluttering
Back to School Home Organization: The Five Systems That Hold
The five systems that stop school mornings falling apart, set up in an afternoon and maintained in ten minutes a week.
Printables for this room
Entryway Setup With No Hallway
Five things need a home. Everything else is optional. Vertical space and one hard rule.
Download PDF →The Five Back to School Systems
Decide these five things once in August so nobody decides them at ten past eight on a Tuesday.
Download PDF →
Other rooms
Desk, office and paperwork
Usually a corner of another room rather than a room of its own, which is exactly why it needs rules that a whole study would not.
Kids' rooms and toys
The only part of a house where the volume genuinely grows on its own, and the only part where the other person gets a say.
Flats and small spaces
Renting, no drilling, and not much floor. Small-space advice usually assumes you can mount things to a wall, and most people cannot.
Whole house
The routines and resets that are not about one room: what to do weekly, how often things actually need doing, and how to start when all of it feels like too much.