Locker Bench

 Do you ever get a pile-up of stuff at the door?  Okay, maybe it's never this bad (thank goodness), but when school started I knew we needed a solution to our problem of backpacks, jackets and shoes being tossed onto the floor as soon as the kids walked in from the bus.  I looked at many entryway benches.  I love the ideas from ana-white.com.  Her projects and plans are so inspiring!  In the end, we had to work with the space we have and created our own custom piece.  Which I totally love!

 We used reclaimed wood (aka picked up off the curb on trash day) to create our locker bench.  My handy-man built the main part of the bench and I added the trim and did the finishing work on it. 

 I originally wanted it to be just yellow, but it did not look good with our kitchen which has yellow on the upper part of the wall and yellow with brown glazing over the top on the bottom of the walls.  So I just matched our walls. 

We added lots of hooks so everyone can double up on the "locker" space.  The bench also doubles as the back of banquet seating that we created on the other side.  But that's another post for another week. 

Of course this bench gets cluttered and stuff does get left on the floor, but I just toss it up onto the bench, and our path to the door is free and clear.  Yea!  Part of our problem right now is too many coats, jackets, sweaters, etc. hanging on our hooks.  Our weather has been crazy with warm days, cool days, cold days, hot days.  When I'm about ready to pack away our coats, we get down into the low 40's.  Ah, Spring.  Or as my husband says, "if you don't like the weather, just wait five minutes." 

Happy organizing!

~Lena