When we moved into this house a year and a half ago, I did not forsee this problem. Our garage door opens up into our living room, and there isn’t much of a landing space. When last winter hit, I found myself and the kids tracking in tons of snow, water and mud, right onto our white carpet. Yikes! I really wanted to put a cute end table in this corner. But functionality always wins at my house. So, I came up with this cheap makeshift mudroom. 

It’s the perfect place for sitting down, unlacing our shoes and boots, hanging our coats, and storing our gloves, bags, backpacks, etc. Plus, our house doesn’t have a fireplace, and I really wanted a mantle to decorate for holidays. So now I have a cute little “ledge” to decorate.

Here’s the BEFORE and AFTER.

I got the ledge and Fleur de Lis hooks all on sale at Hobby Lobby. I had a coupon for the storage ottoman from Target. The rug and basket are from Wal-Mart. It’s really nothing too fancy, but it totally fixed the problem!

One little tip… when I nailed the hooks to the wall, the nailhead stood out really bad, so I just colored it with a black sharpie to blend it in.