Creating a Simple Winter Gear Drying Station
We had our first snowfall of the year last week, and the kids were all anxious to get outside to play in the snow. After they went outside, I realized that I didn’t have a winter gear drying station.
In years past, we’ve used our garage as an “undressing” area, laying our wet coats, snow pants, hats, and gloves on top of our chest freezer and lining our boots on mats next to the door. That’s not really possible this year.
We don’t have much room to work with in our current house as the outside door opens into the kitchen/dining room, and the coat closet is through the living room and down the hall. I didn’t like the idea of my kids tracking snow and water through the entire house.
While the kids were outside playing, I started to brainstorm about possibilities, and I came up with a simple makeshift mudroom/winter gear drying station in my kitchen.
Making Room for a Makeshift Mudroom
I did a bit of furniture rearranging and got creative in order to create a makeshift mudroom in the middle of our kitchen for all the wet winter gear to have a home without my kids tramping snow and water throughout the house.
I took a leaf out of the table (since the kids are the only ones who generally sit at it – I only needed to have access for three chairs), rotated it, and pushed the end up against the wall to create a small space in which to set up my winter gear drying station.
Supplies Needed for a Makeshift Mudroom
Everything I needed for my winter gear drying station was already in my house. I grabbed my collapsible drying station, some wooden clothes pins, and a plastic boot tray. I already had a small “welcome mat” inside the door that stayed (although, I might be looking for something a little bit bigger in our storage downstairs so all the kids can stand on it at the same time and we can close the door to the outside).
Setting Up a Makeshift Mudroom
The space I had created by moving the kitchen table was just large enough to set up the collapsible drying rack with the boot tray under it. The kids snow pants and coats hang on the outer four corners while we use clothes pins to hang the wet gloves, hats, socks, scarves, etc.
I used a clothes pin to connect matching gloves together and hang them over one of the rung on the drying rack – keeps them from falling and helps them stay together!
As often as my kids play outside, I’ll probably leave the winter gear drying station up until spring, but if I ever want to take it down, it’ll take less than a minute to collapse the drying rack and relocate all of it to the coat closet down the hall.
