Kim Kubsch

“Creating Welcoming Home Entrances” is ninth in a series of articles featuring techniques for decluttering your home—one room at a time. As owner of Joyful DOWNSIZING, I am passionate about helping boomers and seniors declutter to simplify their lives, organize remaining items, and downsize unwanted stuff.

This month, we will tackle home entrances.

The front door is the face of your home. Just like you “put your face on” so you can greet people, you can create beautiful, vibrant, and welcoming places to enter and greet guests. It is important for your front door to open freely, without noise or creaking and without obstruction of furniture or objects.

The house’s main artery can quickly turn into a dumping ground for items that are used often or taken off, such as boots, shoes, coats, walking sticks, backpacks, and keys, if you let it. Most homes have numerous doors that lead to the exterior of the home, but typically one is used most often—the garage door.

Create a dedicated space for daily essentials using a tray on a table or counter to catch keys, phones, hats, sunglasses, shopping bags, umbrellas, masks, and other odds and ends we take with us every day. If space is at a premium, hang wall hooks for keys, bags, scarves, raincoats, backpacks, and hats.

To categorize your family’s daily essentials, try 3M Command hooks which are very versatile and come in many shapes, sizes, and even colors. They are easily hung and easily removed from most types of wall textures.

Use a washable shoe tray or shoe rack to store shoes and boots. This will help reduce bringing unnecessary dirt into your living areas. Such shoe storage areas often help create a “shoes-off household.”

For those with dogs, create a separate bin or basket to include dog-walking items of a flashlight, an umbrella, leash, and pet-waste bags.

To ensure this space stays clutter-free, take care of your mail before putting it down. That means immediately opening anything of importance and recycling any junk mail.

As with any room of the house, use labels to identify the use of the bin, basket, tub, or drawer. The label may be a piece of masking tape, chalkboard tape, an adhesive white label, or more decorative clip-on or chalkboard labels. The more decorative types are offered on Amazon.com or ContainerStore.com.

Your newly-organized entrances will attract joy and positive energy into your home.

Future articles will feature the office-digital, garage, hobby areas, and medications. Stay tuned.

Call Kim to learn about her free 30-minute consultation at 480-720-8566 or email [email protected]. Review services and what happy clients say at www.JoyfulDOWNSIZING.com.