Scary Spaces: Vertical Landing Strip

To get into the spirit of Halloween, I'm doing a short series called Scary Spaces (Cue the creepy music. Reeeeek reeek reeeek).  I'll be focusing on the scariest parts of our house, doing my best to make them more welcoming for the upcoming winter holidays!

First up is our "landing strip."  No plane here.  We do have mail, poo bags, keys, purses, shoes, golfing gloves, change, returns, dog leash....ugh, need I go on?  We have junk all over the place because we don't have a designated spot for any of it to go.

stuff taking over the dining room

mail and receipts taking over the kitchen

What we desperately needed was an organized spot just inside the front door where we could drop everything right when we came home.

We had this lovely, but underutilized, closet in the front hallway, just begging for some love.  (Please don't look at the paint or rug, it's a scary space all on it's own!)

I had tried to build an organizer for the door, but when I found out the door was hollow and nothing could be screwed into it, my project died.

Luckily, I just saw this awesome gift wrap station on I Heart Organizing that used an Elfa over-the-door system, and was totally inspired.

One trip to The Container Store, and I was all set!  I bought the door system, three deep baskets, and three shallow baskets.  All their shelving is 25% off right now, so I picked a good time to go!

The system was super easy to install, and took maybe 10 minutes.

Then I loaded it all up!

The shallow baskets are for dog stuff, husband stuff, and my stuff.  I added a jar for the hubs to keep all his change in.  Once I figure out a good way, I'll also label the baskets.

The deep baskets are for husband mail, my mail, and stuff to return (which there's a lot of right now while we're working on the house).

And for a cherry on top, all the mail gets sorted right next to the recycling bin!

We're super happy with the new system, and especially with our uncluttered kitchen and dining room.

Stayed tuned... the spaces only get scarier from here!

Update! 

I finally added labels to the bins so there's no confusion about which one is for what.  I picked up some stick-on bookplates at Staples (designed by my girl Martha), and used my Silhouette to make some cute labels to fit inside.

We've been using this system for over 4 months now, and we love it!  It keeps all our junk out of the way, yet easily accessible.