Mud Rooms... I want one!

For a while now I have not been able to get mud rooms out of my head! It all started when my sister showed me the plans for her new house, she and her husband are building their dream home in Hudsonville Michigan. The one thing on the building plans that I loved (well I loved all of it, especially the kitchen and huge closets!) was the mud room at the entrance from their garage. I just kept thinking, gosh that would be so nice to have a space by our entry from the garage that we could put all of our stuff!
We have a coat closet by our front door, but rarely come in to the house that way, and with the type of winters we have in Minnesota, I would love a place to put coats, wet boots and a place to sit and remove them. However the space by our back door is hardly workable for a mud room, (photos below), but I knew I could figure something out.
Another sign that I should continue my mud room quest was this blog on the Lettered Cottage, I was able to gain some more inspiration for my... sort of, mud room.

Here is what I would say is a dream mud room... lots of space with seating, cubbies, hooks, and drawers, what more could you want?


Next is one that gave me some more hope, it is a smaller space, and more unique to the house, still has the seat and storage...


And this one gave me even more hope that I could figure out a mud room for our house, all this one has is a wall with hooks, but it works!


And then here is a DIY one that a friend of mine did. Abby and Jason work a lot of their house and also noticed that in many new houses they have those built in mud room cubbie set ups, so Jason built one, fancy isn't it?!?! When I saw this picture I again thought, hey I want a mud room!


So here's my dilemma, the space by our backdoor is more open, no walls really, and it isn't a hallway, so we didn't want it cluttered up with stuff sitting out everywhwere. The photo is taken from the little sunroom area off of our living room with the back door to the right, the mini bathroom straight ahead, and the hallway to the kitchen and basement stairs to the left.


Here is another photo, all we have is a mirror in the space now, which we like, but we are just a little stumped on how we can make this work for us, again, we don't want it to become a cluttered up space since it isn't a closet area, we pass through it to get into the basement or to the kitchen or bathroom.


So here is a photo from the basement stairs facing the backdoor, the longest wall we have in the space is the left wall with the mirror, measuring 30", however, we can't put anything there because you you would just run into it (as you can see from the photo) if you walked into the space. The other wall to the right of the door measures only 22", I thought, "That's it!?! What the heck can I fit here that would be useful?"


And here is the view from the back door facing the basement stairs. The wall on the left also measures 22", what in the world can I do with two 22" walls that could make it useful?



So I started to think, what do we really need that would make a big difference?
1- some kind of seat
2- some place to put shoes or boots
3- hooks

Hooks I am still on the fence, since I don't want the space to look cluttered or like a closet. And we need some kind of decor is the space as well, it is pretty plain and sad looking.

So here's to hoping I can come up with a useful mud room-like space, and not spend too much dough on it!