Take your hall closet from crammed to decluttered with these hall closet organization ideas. They are simple, cheap and creative. You’ll be saying “Why didn’t I think of that?”
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What’s in your hall closet? Can you accurately answer this question? Really?
Traditionally, the closet in the front hall was intended solely as a place for coats, jackets and other weather-related items. However, times have changed.
Today, the hall closets in many homes and apartments are filled with an astonishing number of things not even remotely related to coats, hats, or umbrellas. Sporting goods, ironing boards, vacuum cleaners, last year’s Christmas decorations, a dozen spare extension cords–the list goes on and on. If this describes your hall closet, you might be searching for the best way to organize this small, yet crucial space in your home. Wouldn’t you love to get organized and reduce the clutter?
Today we’re sharing helpful hall closet organization ideas for all kinds of closets–whether you’re storing linens, utility items, and cleaners or traditional coats and outerwear. Let these 17 closet before-and-afters motivate you to declutter and straighten up your hall closet space.
Hall Closet Organization Ideas to Save Space (and Your Sanity)
Jump To:
- What Should Be Stored In A Hall Closet?
- Coat Closet Organization Ideas
- Utility Closet Organization Ideas
- Linen Closet Organization Ideas
- Multipurpose Hall Closet Ideas
What Should Be Stored In A Hall Closet?
It may seem like a no-brainer, but the very first step in organizing your hall closet is simply asking yourself: What should I store in my hallway closet?
It’s true that you can store anything you need to in your hall closet, from outerwear and bags to shoes and extra cleaning supplies. But this question is helpful to consider before you head off to the store to purchase new closet organization shelves, invest in an organization system, or even bust out your DIY tools, because it can be helpful to pare down what you really need to store in your small hall closet. Maybe some of your shoes can be moved into the garage, or maybe you have enough basem*nt storage to store winter coats, hats, and scarves during the warmer months.
What you store in your hallway closet is ultimately up to you, but ensuring your closet isn’t stuffed to the brim with unnecessary items will help make your life easier when it comes time to implement these organization tips.
The Coat Closet
The coat closet always seems to be an overstuffed mess. Organizing shoes, coats, bags, hats and mittens will help ease the winter morning routine.
1. Hook it up.
A coat closet stuffed full of hangers is always a mess. Those coats never seem to stay put! Swap out a closet rod for a hook hanging system. These coat closets look so much more neat and functional. Plus, kids and adults are more likely to hang their coats on a hook than a hanger.
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This version from The Real Housewives of Riverton accommodates everyone in the house, big and small.
2. Pitch the piles.
Getting your stuff off the floor instantly eliminates visual clutter. On the other hand, shoes thrown at the bottom of a closet create an instant mess.
Try a peg wall for shoe storage. Simplify the morning routine by making sure shoes are right next to their partners and easy to grab. This solution fromSaw Dust Girlkeeps all footwear in its place.
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If you aren’t much of a handy DIYer, add shoe binsto keep kids’ kicks in order. Gina atCamp Cleanused clear plastic drawer storage and personalized each drawer with a photo. That’s certainly an easy and adorable shoe organization method.
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Do you need some ways to store those winter boots?Here are three simple ways to store boots and save some space.
3. Use every available inch.
Adding behind the door storageadds to your closet’s square footage. Placing bins, baskets or even just simply a hanging shoe rack will give alternative storage space for smaller items.
Chelsea fromTwo Twenty Oneadded storage to a blank space in her closet by hanging rods with command hooks to the inside of the closet door.
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Angela over at blue i stylekeeps hats and mittens properly placed with an over the door shoe rack.
The combination of baskets and hooks on the door of this closet by Made 2 Makeis so functional. This simple addition to her coat closet keeps mail out of the way but also in plain sight.
4. Add shelves wherever you can.
Create more spaces for bins and shoes by adding shelves and cubicleswhere there would normally be wasted space. Look under or above the space where you hang coats for space for a new shelf.
This coat closet makeover from Green Street has extra storage at the top and bottom of a closet, creating a more functional place to store shoes and other items.
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The Utility Closet
There’s nothing like having to dig out cleaning supplies from an overstuffed closet to make you lose all motivation for cleaning before you even begin. If your hall closet doubles as a utility closet, we feel for you. Here are some tips for keeping this shared closet orderly and your supplies right at your fingertips.
1. Pretty up a pegboard.
Placing all your cleaning utensils on a pegboardkeeps things off the floor and easy to spot when you need them. Check out this utility closet Missy put together on her blog Lookie What I Did.Such an attractive method to organize her tools.
2. When in doubt, use a basket.
Corral all cleaning supplies into one basket for an easy grab-and-go solution. These designated, room by room cleaning basketsfrom Home Made by Carmona’s hall closet house specific cleaning items for certain rooms or areas of the home. You can grab and go to the room armed with all the utensils you need to specifically clean bedrooms, bathrooms or your kitchen. Ursula suggested hanging them from a tension rod with hooks. She has even tucked a cleaning checklist in each basket.
Via Revamp Homegoods
3. Add a tension rod to hang brooms, mops and dusters.
Keep your cleaning supplies from falling all over the place by keeping them up in a handy spot. Hooks on the back of a dooror a tension rod with hooks is a successful storage solution. When in doubt, adding hooks on the back of a door is space saving.
Via Sew Many Ways
4. Think outside of the box.
Organization is all about working with what you have to find creative solutions that work for your specific needs. This shoe rack turned into a paper towel holderhas your paper towels ready to clean up spills in a jiffy. Maybe not the most necessary organization idea for you, but it is certainly creative!
The Linen Closet
If your hall closet is home to linens, we have some ideas for you, too. Linen closets are usually a small space in every house, so it becomes very easy to just stuff in sheets and towels and forget about it. Once that door closes, the mess is out of sight and out of mind–until you have to find what you’re looking for the next time you go in there.
Having items in bins and baskets creates a more organized space and a linen closet where anyone can put away linens easily. Here are a few linen closet organization ideas to try.
1. Roll instead of fold.
In a home with children, and even for some adults, folding towels and fitted sheets into the perfect square is a chore in itself. So why not roll your linens? Just as it does in a suitcase,the rolling method creates more space and you do not have to worry about an imperfect fold. Carmel from Our Fifth Houserolls fitted and flat sheets and sticks them into fabric bins.
Via Simply Organized
2. Did we mention baskets?
Whether you roll or fold your linens to organize them, grouping similar items in baskets will add extra space to every shelf in your closet. Try placing small items in a basket or an under shelf crate to maximize your shelf area and keep you organized.
3. Invest in item-specific organizers.
Add space for unique and hard-to-organize items in your hall closet by seeking out specific organizers sold online or at a home goods store. For example, you’ll never misplace your gift wrapping supplies again after buying one of these mounted wrapping paper caddies.
Via Interior Candy
Bonus: On the topic of gift wrapping, here gift bags are organized by being suspended under a wire rack with hooks. If you have wire shelving in your hall closet, have you ever thought to hang hooks from the bottomfor extra storage? Inventive!
Via The Old Park Homestead
4. Divide and conquer.
Tricia and Jason at Simplicity in the South use dividers in their linen closet to keep sheets organized and in place. Dividers like this would also be perfect for towels, too. A stack won’t fall out of place when a divider has got its back.
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Read Also: 8 Linen Closet Storage Hacks to Help You Stay Organized
How to Organize Your Multi-Purpose Hall Closet
What happens when you live in a small space and only have one closet that has to store everything? If you live in a home where your hall closet is a small, but mighty multipurpose storage space, here are some solutions from my own closet makeover to keep everything organized and easy to find.
1. Unify the space with a color theme.
Here is my family’s hall closet. It serves as extra pantry space, the pet supply area, a linen closet, a utility closet, and a game storage space. As you can see, the before was a mess of everything all over the place.
Creating a color scheme sounds silly, but here is my “after.” Since this closet is a drop zone for so many different items, creating a unified color scheme helps it look less cluttered. Do you agree?
I rolled linens into attractive baskets, placed similar pantry items into cute bins, and organized all of the paper products together. This color-coded bin method isn’t only more efficient, but it also simply looks like the closet is well organized and helps my family find what they are looking for.
2. Create zones.
I dedicated zones in my hall closet–basically corners and shelves–to a certain purpose. I now have a game/kids area, a pantry space, a linen area, and a space for cleaners. This closet organization hack helps me find what I need quickly because I know what section of my multi–purpose closet to go to when looking for a specific item.
3. Eliminate the extra.
Is there anything in your closet that can be consolidated or gotten rid of completely? As we mentioned earlier, try to rid yourself of unnecessary items, bulky boxes, or storage containers that take up too much room during the closet organization process. For example, removing the games from their boxes added more shelf space in my closet. Having them stored in smaller containers makes them easier to pull out and put away, and it also rids the closet of a lot of extra clutter and chaos.
This method of eliminating the excess in your hall closet also extends to items like batteries and paper products. Why keep the bulky and oddly shaped battery packaging when I can fit the batteries into a concise bin that matches the rest of my closet? Changes like this help the space look much more organized.
Need some guidance on getting rid of unnecessary items? Our article on The Konmari Closet Method is a great place to get started.
4. Add labels!
There’s nothing worse than taking the time to purge and organize a closet space if your family is just going to destroy it again after a week or so of use. Adding some easy-to-make labels can keep your sanity and your family members in the loop once you’ve finished organizing your hall closet. If you can’t see what is in the basket or bin, label it. This helps you find what you need quickly and also helps other members of your household keep the closet as orderly as they found it.
Are you organizing pantry items in your closet? Get free pantry labels here.
5. Organize board games with office supplies.
Instead of only looking for bins and baskets in the organization area of the store, a great organizational tip is to search in office supply section or the bathroom storage aisle, too. The perfect resolution for an organization problem may be where you normally wouldn’t look. For example, these document folders ended up being the best storage solution for board games and puzzles.
Small office storage binskeep tiny pieces within reach while these mini file folderswere practically made for Monopoly money.
Hall Closet Organization Systems to Keep Stress at Bay
An organized hall closet can be the first step to keeping the rest of your home in order. When you have an orderly and attractive storage space that organizes everything you need, it may inspire you to keep up with your scheduled chores, and get other family members inspired to declutter, too–making it a win-win all around.
All organized? The next step is maintaining your new organizational system. Check out our article on How to Clean a Closet and KEEP It Organized for some helpful tips.
This post was first published on 8/9/2017, was revised on 4/30/2020, and was updated on 9/23/2022 to provide new information.
