My 17 y.o. DD has a WIC and my 15 y.o. DS has a reach in with bifold doors. I dearly wish we had room for a WIC for DS. His closet was set up with an Elfa system about 5 years ago, and we set up the rods and shelves to fit his hanging shirts, sweatshirts, and pants, and drawers for socks etc. Well, I recently took out and rehung everything, because he's now 6'5" (and growing) and none of the hanging clothes fit any more. Luckily, the Elfa components are easy to shift around. The bifold doors are a pain and regular doors would take up too much room. His closet is always spilling over into his room. DD is not an organized person, but at least she can throw stuff into her closet and her room stays neat. All her clothes are in the WIC so we don't need a dresser in her room. DS has one dresser and I'm going to order another one because he just doesn't have enough space for his stuff. And we're good about clearing out and donating things he has outgrown or doesn't want anymore; it's just that they get big and their clothes get bigger and they need more clothes. (On game days in middle school and high school the players wear button down shirts, dress pants and ties, so they need a fair amount of nice stuff in addition to their everyday stuff.) I applaud your planning efforts! I feel overrun with shoes. There are only the 3 of us (DH passed away last year) but we're a multi-sport family and if you counted our shoes you'd think there were 20 of us! Don't know your climate but when you do your planning take into account the size and height of rain and snow boots, as well as sports shoes. We have had soccer, football, basketball, baseball, golf, tennis, hiking and running shoes all in the mudroom at the same time, along with the shoes we actually wear just for regular use and the pads for football and other sports equipment. I can't imagine keeping all my work/dressy shoes in the mudroom as well. There are some shoes you may only wear infrequently - think dress shoes that your kids only wear for holidays, graduation, highschool dances or other fancy occassions, and your dressy shoes. Are you sure you want all of those in your mudroom?

Oaktown, thanks for the sleeping alcove and dutch beds link. So cool! I googled dutch beds after your post; such a neat concept. I love what Mongoct did. I don't think my husband and I are quite that talented. :-) I agree that difficulty making the bed would be a slight annoyance at worst for me. If it's something my kids, one or both, would really enjoy, then bed-making is a non-issue. Kirkhall, thank you for your opinion. I appreciate it and I want to hear all sides before I make a decision so that I can consider the pros and cons. In one bedroom, the dimensions would still by 11'6" by 12'2", which I think is fine especially without a bed in there. We've had bedrooms smaller than that for the kids. The other would be 12" by 10'4", and it looks like that closet depth without modification would be 28", so we'd need to add 8". I'm a little more concerned about that one. Worthy, I think a bed in the closet is efficient and smart if space is tight. ;-) LuAnn_in_PA, when they outgrow the closet bed: because we are keeping the framing, we would just have to add a door to turn it back into a closet. If we made it a closet again, we would add a storage system so that all of their clothes would fit inside, so that they wouldn't need a dresser. This would make up for the lost 8 square feet of bedroom space with the expanded closet. It would be a foot deeper than normal, but with the 6 ft. wide opening, it should not hinder access. That is my thought anyway. Depending on age, it could also be lined with shelves for books with some big pillows in the corner for a reading nook. Or we could add a chair and a desk and make it a study nook. mommytoty, LOVE that! Now I wish we had stairs! What a great idea. Live_wire_Oak, I'm not sure I can picture your idea with the built in dressers, but it sounds interesting. Do you have an inspiration picture? dlm2000, I bet your son loved that! If you had the closet and the alcove, did you have large bedroom dimensions? I'm not sure we have the space for both. I'm including both bedroom layouts showing original closet and expanded closet dimensions:

When kids toys and bits and pieces are all over the house or piled in piles or boxes, it all becomes one big scramble of mess. My own now grown kids never had so much that it was hard to keep up with. But, my grandchildren have so darned much stuff with little parts that never are all in one place that most of it is just worthless junk. If you can manage to cull it out and take the best of them, put the pieces all together and put them on a shelve, take them out to use them and put them back there will be more appreciation for more of them. Having too much is the bane of our clutter and mess. I know it sounds like a lot of effort, but having fewer things to wrestle with is the key to enjoying it all more. When you begin to look for alternative storage ideas it is evidence that you need to look to pare it all down. You can't stuff ten pounds of stuff in a five pound bag.

This would make sense if you had no other bathrooms on this level, or even had one on this level and wanted to add a half bath. But, it doesn't make sense to have three baths so close together. I don't think it will help resale and could hurt to eliminate the hall closet. Here's the main issue I am curious about - what do you not like about guests having to use the hallway bath? Figure out what bothers you about that and see if you can come up with a plan to address that issue. (For example, do users leave it cluttered or a mess and you don't like guests to see that? If so, can you add a different kind of vanity or more storage organization?)