I happened to be driving by IKEA while thinking about this and quickly made the turn to look at their plants. I pulled up the list of air filtering house plants, and found one there that worked. The Red-Edged Dracaena, which is supposed to be very simple to care for (a necessity given my brown thumb). Bonus, it was only $10.

It looks cute in the living room where it's getting the filtered sunlight the tag asks for.

Oh, if you look closely in the above picture, you can see the other new addition to the living room:

Fake sofa tables!

We haven't decided what to do about a coffee table, we don't have room for end tables, and we need a place to put glasses, etc when using the living room. Sofa tables seemed like an extravagant expense when we're just tucking them next to a wall, so floating shelves ended up being our answer. We have the one you see above and another longer one against the wall behind the other L of the sectional.

Visually, you barely notice them, but functionally, they are perfect. It's one of those projects that I'm definitely regretting not doing it earlier!

Here is the before again....

And the new after!

Getting most of my shoes and all of everyone else's shoes in here was my number one priority. We always remove our shoes in the house to keep things clean, but were frequently tripping over shoes in our tiny back hall. As you can see in the before, we had a lot of shoes collecting here and the cubby system wasn't cutting it. This new system gives two shelves for Jonathan, one for Cecelia, and three for myself. Unfortunately, the remnants of my shoe obsession in college mean that I still have quite a few pairs of shoes in my own closet. I can keep out-of-season shoes special occasion shoes stored up high, but I'm also working on paring my collection down to the ones I actually wear. Sadly it seems that my opportunities to wear red patent leather stilletos are growing fewer and fewer, so I have a bag of shoes headed to Goodwill and a few saved for my sisters.

That little set of shelves to the right is a cubby for each of us. Purse in mine, big girl diaper bag things for Cecelia, and not much yet for Jonathan!

I love the two drawer-like baskets here, one for things to grab on the way out like sunscreen and cameras and the other as a house "outbox." Borrowed books and Tupperware to return to family, an old pair of glasses to donate at the post office, a birthday card ready to bring to a party this weekend, etc. This is the type of stuff that collects all over my house for months because I never remember to bring it with me. I'm hoping that I'll notice these items when I grab my shoes and bring the things that belong to the people I'm going to see that day.

The basket on the right is still empty, making me feel extra organized.

Up top I have the picnic basket filled with a few outdoor entertaining items, grill tools and cake takers. Coolers, beach towels for summer (will replace as seasons change), and my basket of disposable dishes below.

I installed 7 hooks that we had removed from our bedroom closets to handle the rest. A bag of pool and beach toys, umbrella, reusable bags, and a bag of plastic bags to bring in for recycling. There's also a couple hooks on the side for Jonathan and I to hang our most-used coat in the winter. The rest live on hangers in the front hall closet.

The shelves in here are all Closetmaid laminate organizers from Target. I've had a 9 cube shelf for years that still looks brand new, so I believe in their durability. That one has been moved from the living room to the basement to the back closet and back to the living room and still looks good. I considered putting adjustable white wire shelving in this closet as we have done in the bedrooms, but I'm glad we went this route. We do not need any hanging space here, and we can take all the shelves with us when we leave. I painted the old hanging rod, so when we go to sell the house it will hopefully still look this good.

I've joined a party at Remodelaholic!

Two-and-a-half years later, most of them are still there. Ooops.

Today I finally took them down and repackaged them into a pretty crate from Target along with the leftover package of 225 plates and who-knows-how-many cups....

It's my very first step in the overhaul of this disaster:

I'm hoping that by publicly posting this abysmal back hall closet situation, I will be more motivated to finish this project by this weekend. Check for an update soon!