One of the things that we get a lot of demand for at Footstools & More is a hallway bench with storage. We make a lot of hallway benches, and many of them have storage because it makes so much sense.

Just to begin with, quite a number of families today ban outdoor footwear in the home, and there is a certain amount of sense to that, especially if you have expensive carpets. You really don’t want people coming in from outside when it is raining, or worse still, snowing, and dumping wet and muddy footprints all over the hall carpet, up the stairs, in the lounge, and so on.

The answer is to come in from outside, wipe your feet on the mat, sit on the hallway bench and take off the wet and/or muddy shoes and put on a pair of slippers. The slippers, of course, are in the storage part of the bench which is where you put them when you sat down to put on your outdoor shoes before going out. Or perhaps, wellies. So the wet and muddy shoes can dry off in the storage bench, ready for your next venture into the great outdoors.

Of course, if it is not wet or snowy, you may just wipe your feet on the mat and switch to slippers, then take your shoes up to the bedroom where you keep them in the bottom of the wardrobe.

Of course, many people still do not have a law about “no outdoor shoes to be worn in the house”, so if this is the case in your family you can use the storage in the bench for all sorts of things. A lot of people keep shopping bags in there because it is just so easy to grab them when you go out to the shops. Then again, you might keep the dog’s lead in there, together with his coat if you use one. (That is something we have never quite understood because most dogs come with a fitted coat in the first place! However, each to his or her own).

Some people keep gardening tools in the storage part of the hall bench, such as the shears for cutting the front hedge, and a hand fork for digging up the weeds from the flower bed. No matter: you can use a hall bench that has storage for whatever you wish.