Create a Control Center

Living as a multi-generational household has certainly had its challenges. One that we had to address early on was where could we find a place to organize our keys, the mail, packages to be mailed, packages received, a place for a small trashcan for throwing away junk mail, and where to leave notes for family members to find upon their return.

As we discussed our options, we knew we would need to find a central location close to our front door and the stairway. Because Faith’s family and Nan sleep downstairs and Jim and I upstairs, the entryway would be a central location for all of us.

Years ago I remembered reading about household control centers in Don Aslett’s book called, Make Your House Do the Housework. In his book he talks about having a central location in each room (which I don’t) where you place boxes of tissues, message boards, trashcans, etc.–whatever is appropriate for that particular room of the house. Often these are placed close to the entrance of the room.

After each of us made suggestions of what we thought was important to have in this unit, Jim and our nearly-grown son Jeremy decided they would build a wooden unit to meet our needs. (The two of them are very good at woodworking). As we designed it and waited for it to be built, we placed a low bookshelf unit with only two shallow shelves in the entryway by the front door. Then we placed four little woven baskets on top of it so incoming mail could be sorted. (The fourth basket was for our grown son Matt who lived with us for eight months last year).

Several weeks later, our new control center was completed! The guys made it out of oak plywood and oak boards and it stands about 7 feet tall. Then I refinished it with a golden-oak stain and finished it with several coats of a water-based polyurethane.

The following photos help explain what we focused on as needs for our control center.

On the sides of this unit, we placed three large hooks for hanging up coats, carrying bags, purses, etc. There are two on the right and one on the left (an umbrella holder on the left makes it necessary to only have room for one). The upper shelf of our control center has a clock sitting on the top shelf. You don’t really need a clock, but it helps to hide the smoke alarm fixture on the wall which is rather ugly. The top shelf is for items that will stay awhile, like popcorn buckets to take to the movies so you can get a discount.

The middle shelves house our baskets we use for sorting the mail. Whoever picks up the mail out at the road (our mailbox is 1/2 mile from the house) brings it in and sorts it. They are arranged alphabetically to make it easier to remember whose basket is which.

The bottom area houses a board with hooks for everyone’s key rings. This makes it really nice when you need to borrow someone’s keys when they aren’t around. In the middle is the alarm keypad, and then a small magnetic marker board for leaving notes, money, and messages, along with a small bucket full of pens and pencils for writing notes.

If you look in the picture below, you will also see that we have wires that come out through the shelf housing an additional basket. The wires are for charging cell phones and other devices using USB cords. The basket pictured is for outgoing mail and other items of family business that are usually leaving the house.

The bottom section of our family’s control center allows us to put incoming packages, purses of friends who visit, and other temporary items. On the right you can see a small rectangular trashcan. What you can’t see is the whole placed in the shelf above (unless you look at the first picture). This allows us to throw away any junk mail so we don’t have to deal with it later.

We are trying to decide if we want to put doors on the front of these two bottom shelves, but for now, it works just fine the way it is.

I bought a beautiful woven umbrella holder at the Kentucky Welcome Center last fall and it fits great next to the control center. It’s wonderful to have umbrellas available right by the front door.

While I know that many readers would not be able to afford to do a control center like we did or even know how to build a separate unit like this, we wanted to share how much an organizational tool like this has helped us. It is our hope that this post might help you know there is a solution that can greatly help you in organizing this essential element when it comes to families living together.

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