Simplifying our Home: The Coat Conundrum

Today I am back with my series on simplifying and organizing our home. I don't know where you are from, but for us in the Midwest winter means cold, cold, and more cold with some snow sprinkled in. At least that is how this last winter turned out to be. With the cold comes coats, hats, gloves, more coats, and still more coats. Our family has a serious coat issue.

I had to remove about 7 coats to actually show you the coat rack.

Along with our coat issue we have issues hanging our coats in the coat closet. I don't know why, but we do not hang our coats in the closet. It is not that we can't. It is not like I went and electrified the door handle so I could sit back and laugh every time someone tried to open the door. That would be kinda funny, kind of like those hand buzzers, but I don't think my family would appreciate it.

Our coats always found a place hanging on the the back of our dining room chairs. I am guilty of it also, but it just drove me nuts! I don't know why, call it habit, convenience, laziness, but that is where they always ended up. I could not stand it and decided to do something about it. Actually I recruited Mark to help me. I decided that since our coats always ended up in our dining room then we needed a place to put them in the dining room that was not the table. So, I scoured the web and found a solution. A coat rack in the dining room.

Yep so it is kinda like our laundry basket in the living room Simplifiying Our Home Conquering the Moutain. I mean really who has a coat rack in the dining room? Well, we do for two reasons. Our foyer is too small to fit a coat rack and our coats always end up in the dining room anyway. Ok, so off on a tangent I felt all fancy typing out foyer, but seriously we have a little landing where we open our front door, the garage door, and toss our shoes off of our feet. I just like the name foyer better than small landing where maybe two people can barely fit. Anyway after looking online for awhile I found a coat rack that I really liked that Mark could easily build for us. Giving credit where credit is due this is where I found it DIY Coat Rack.

I was really drawn to the big chunkiness of it and knew that it would serve our family well. We decided to change up the topper by using a deck post topper instead of their original topper. We also added lower hooks so Ashlyn could easily hang up her stuff. It has really been a very useful and purposeful addition to our home. I also think Mark did a really good job. Props to you honey!

This has solved our coat issue and I now have my dining chairs back. The simple solution of a coat rack in the dining room may be a little out of the box, but it works for our family.