Hooks for Books

We, like I am assuming most people, rarely use our front door.  Most of the time, we are shuffling the kids in and out through the garage, which makes for a mess of shoes and coats and bookbags inside our garage door.  It wouldn't be all that bad, except our entry from the garage is 3 feet by 3 feet, then you either go down the stairs to the basement or into the kitchen.  You can imagine, if there are 6 pairs of shoes at any given time inside this 3'x3' area, there isn't much room for your actual feet to step, making it a ticking time bomb for someone to fall down the stairs.

Unfortunatley, with this post, we don't solve that problem.  The problem we DO solve, is where Emma hangs her backpack when she comes home from school.  Usually it is hung on a dining room chair or on the floor in the living room.  But no more, my friends!!

Here is what our back entry looks like.  That's the stairway of death to the left of the white door.

When we put new countertops in our kitchen a few years ago, we purposefully overhung this section of countertop.  Our intent was to build another cabinet to house wine bottles or cookbooks - just haven't gotten around to that yet.  The extra foot of countertop space makes a huge difference though!  The more I looked at that empty void, the more I thought we could do something with it in the meantime to give it some more function.  

It was a perfect size and height to hang Emma's backpack and jacket.  Most mom's out there can probably relate to the school day craziness that ensues 5 minutes before you need to be walking out the door - we always seem to be hunting for this child's backpack and jacket.

So I grabbed a few antique hooks from our stash and screwed them in using 1 3/4" screws.

Turns out it's a great spot to hang my purse as well!