How an Entryway Makeover Made Our Home More Organized & Cozy

With easy-to-find inexpensive items, I turned our super messy, tiny entryway into a functional welcoming space.

Cube organizer

I created a central area with a nine-cube organizer. 

I believe this is Room Essentials from Target, and it was on sale for 50% off. When I ordered this online, it was only $25. 

I used a hack to turn a nine-cube room organizer into a storage cubby to hang backpacks and store shoes. It's exactly what we needed in this tiny entryway. It isn't even an entryway.

You open the door in our living room and kitchen. It was perfect for making a functional space where everyone would know where their shoes and backpacks go. 

Clear the clutter

The first thing we're doing is cleaning up all of this clutter. 

Clutter collects in this area more than anything. Library books, shoes, toys, and trash get piled into this front area. I hope having a piece of furniture here will help decrease the clutter.

Cube organizer hack

The hack for this piece of furniture is that you're going to leave out one of the horizontal shelves. Instead of having nine cubes, you'll only have three cubes for the drawers on the very bottom. That's where you'll put the kids' shoes. 

Then you'll have three little cubbies to hang backpacks. This works well for us because we have three kids. If you have more kids and have the space, you could get two of them and put them side by side. 

This was very easy to assemble. 

I followed the instructions, but I did end up having some issues. Since you don't have that center piece, there will either be a gap in the center or at the top. I ended up leaving the gap at the top.

It comes with short and long dowels, and I realized I wasn't going to be able to use the long dowels because they're made to go into that center shelf. 

I snipped the long dowels to make them slightly shorter so I wouldn't have that gap in between. 

I didn't think I would have the gap at the top, but there has to be a gap somewhere since the sides are made to include that center shelf.

Overall it was a really easy project. It's not a fancy custom-built-in, but it looks cute, and I like how it turned out.  

Both sides fit perfectly, and everything's staying together really well. 

It's not super sturdy or stable because you want to leave the back of it open so that you can screw hooks into the wall. If you did the standard nine-cube organizer, you would put little cardboard pieces on the back.

Finishing the back

I put the cardboard pieces on the back of the bottom row where the little drawers would go and left them off the top. 

I think those cardboard pieces probably add an extra degree of stability that this now doesn't have, but it's super lightweight and just sitting up against the wall.

If you have kids that are going to climb on the piece, then you'll probably want to mount it into the wall and make sure it's sturdy enough.  

I was pleased with the way this came together. 

It took about 30 minutes to put it all together. 

Once it was together, I used hooks for mounting heavy items. 

There were some smaller hooks in the package that I used to put the backpacks up. 

I was planning on using large plastic Command Hooks like the ones we currently have backpacks hanging, but since I had these and wanted to leave the other ones up, I just used them instead. 

Project cost

The fabric storage cubes come in many different colors. 

I got these at Target and chose the lavender color. 

They were just $5 each. This project was cheap because I tried to use as much as I already had, like hooks and hammers, and tools. Of course, the shelf was $25, and then another $15 for the storage cubes

For the corkboard above the shelf, I got a four-pack from Amazon for about $11. 

I thought they would come with sticky mounting tape, but they didn't. I tried to use some command strips that I found to hang it, and I could not get it to stick well, so I ended up using nails to nail it in. 

With the corkboard, the total cost for the shoe and backpack organizer area was $51.

I also have a hair basket that I always leave by the door. I use a storage caddy from the Target dollar section, making it easy to get hair done in the morning because everything's always right by the door. 

DIY entryway makeover

This is the perfect DIY entryway makeover for anyone with a small space trying to get more organized. This is an excellent alternative if you don't have a mud room or a closet by the door.

If you try this cube organizer hack for your entryway, comment below and let us know how it worked for you.