Maybe this (someone else with a fancy program might be able to suggest something better...) Turn your laundry (8'4 is plenty wide for the laundry to go 90* from where it is). Enter your laundry area from the middle of the wall instead of the bottom corner. You will gain a full counter length for folding (and maybe a few inches in the mudroom area). Make all doors be pocket doors. Move everything else slightly to the right. (if you need to keep your kitchen entrance from mudroom where it is, consider making your 1/2 bath a walk-thru bath flanking the laundry door. ie--move the 1/2 bath right next to the laundry room, and put a pocket door on each side. again, 8'+ is plenty of room for a long 1/2 bath. You can easily put 2 3' pocket doors to walk thru it to the laundry). Or, if that was too weird for you: Make your 1/2 bath a square bath, and put it where your closet is now (adjacent to the laundry). Move the garage door to the left a bit, for a more straight shot into the kitchen. move the mudroom left wall to the right a bit, narrowing the space, but leaving room for mudroom stuff (you have over 11' of space in mudroom/bathroom width.) I might also flip the space so that the bathroom is closer to the garage, and the hallway/laundry entrance is at the top (nearer the kitchen). It would look something like this: Enter from garage into long, wide hallway mudroom. walk toward kitchen entrance; to right is a hallway to laundry/1/2 bath rooms. Walk straight through to kitchen. Entire space slightly narrower (let's say at least 1 foot) for a 4' landing near the entrance to downstairs.

Have you considered doors for at least some of the cabinets? I worry about the visual clutter of having everything sitting out there, especially when kids are doing much of the putting-away. I'm less worried about the crowded feeling by the door than many of the others, but I also live in a smallish house where space by the doors is at a premium. I thought you might find these photos helpful. They're of a small cabinet by our back door. The door is hemmed in by a wall on one side and this cabinet to the other. The cabinet is about 7.25 inches deep from the front of the doors to the back of the cabinet that runs into the dishwasher, providing an interior space that's about 5.25 inches deep. We live not far from you and share your weather, and this tiny cupboard is a lifesaver because it provides a space for wet shoes, bird seed, and assorted other things we use outside.You have a significantly deeper space, so it will be even more functional. It also doesn't feel claustrophobic or too tight to us, and the small loss of space by the door is far outweighed by not having things pile up on the counter and floor there! Here's the doorway with cabinet: Here's the interior, showing how shallow it is, but how much stuff we store there. It regularly gets crammed with much more stuff (all the more reason to have doors!), but I'd just cleaned it out when I snapped this photo. Please ignore the cardboard dividers in the cabinet--I didn't want to have permanent dividers put in, and I've been playing around with spacing before buying or making something for the space. As for the bench issue, I think that its utility may somewhat depend on if you're shoes-off or shoes-on people. If you leave shoes by the door, then it's helpful to have a place for the kids to sit down to put them on. I think you'll love having some sort of built-in cabinet there. It will make that space much more functional.

What is the room below the mudroom? Any reason the door can't go there? For the record, I think your current layout is good. You're coming in to a wall of windows, with evidently something worth seeing. Hopefully the powder room door is kept a bit closed so the eye skips over it. A straight line through the mudroom is a good thing.

It seems that what you really need is a coat closet for storing most of your coats year round. Next priority would be a place to hang WET coats and hats and mittens/gloves while they dry. You need a place for shoes in your mudroom -- perhaps eight pair with four suitable for tall shoes/boots for each of you -- perhaps kept beneath a bench to sit on to remove the shoes and on which books and backpacks could be set until outdoor shoes are changed for indoor shoes or slippers. You could hang a shoe storage bag for indoor shoes or bedroom slippers on the inside of the closet door. You could keep most of your shoes in your bedroom closets. Ditto that with hats and gloves and mittens. Expensive dress coats that might need to be protected from soil on children's play coats that might make it into the closet should be kept in the bedroom closet or in a coat bag if they're to be put in the common coat closet. The mudroom would be for a convenient place for those coats and accessories just used or just about to be used. Focus on the coat closet and storing other accessories to meet immediate need. Then teach your children to take their backpacks and books to their rooms once they've shed their coats and changed their outdoor shoes for indoor shoes or slippers or flip flops. You could use the 57" wall as the back wall of your coat closet. Find the heaviest coat with the widest for the largest person that lives in the home. Put that on a very sturdy hanger and measure how deep your closet needs to be -- how much of the 38.5" wall will be needed for the side of your closet. If you need 24" for your coats and 4" for the wall (with closet door facing garage), then you will have 10" in width and 12" in depth to build in shelving (at least 4 -- one for each of you) for hats and mittens and gloves just used or soon to be used and 2" for hanging your door. You could have a top door behind which you'd have the adult shelves and a bottom door behind which you'd have the children's shelves. You could hang hoods for umbrellas on those two doors. The 36.5" x 27" corner could be for a hall tree or a three foot wide bench with at least one shelf below for the children's shoes and/or dirtiest shoes. The adults could return their cleaner shoes to a fabric hanging shoe shelf in the coat closet. https://www.google.com/search?q=fabric+hanging+shoe+shelves+for+closet&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwilg5r_-Y3lAhVuU98KHSFXBUIQ_AUIEigC&biw=1328&bih=617#spf=1570582032538 There could be a mirror and/or hat rack above that bench. Also, along the middle of that 75" wall on the left as you come in from the garage could be hooks for temporarily hanging wet or dirtier coats and accessories. You'll need to leave a couple of feet clear near the kitchen and garage doors but in between that still leaves room for several boards/w/shelves/above on the wall with a few hooks on each -- at least one for each member of the family. In front of the left side of the closet -- left of the closet door, you might add a hat rack for guests to hang their coats and accessories.