Your tent is your home. The entrance to your tent is your foyer.

Just as with your home, the entrance to your tent is the entrance to your home. What do you need to do when you walk in to your home in Black Rock City? Do you need to take your shoes off and put them by the door? Do you need to drop off something in your hands? Grab something that you like to keep by the door? Other than putting my beloved Origami shelving unit by my tent entrance, here are some other things I do in my, so to speak, foyer.

Put a bathroom mat or towel at your tent entrance

Put a bathroom mat or towel at the inside entrance of your tent to help capture some of the insane amount of dust on your shoes when you first walk in your tent. You may have intentions of always taking your shoes off inside your tent, but really? That’s a grand thought for when wearing slip-on shoes and flip-flops, but sometimes you’ll be wearing hiking boots or sturdy lace-up shoes.

A place to store shoes in your tent

Put a second towel or mat next to your tent entrance, and place all of your shoes there. Maybe you use a bin. Some people use a shoe rack. Whatever you choose, make sure you have a shoe area in your tent. Your shoes are going to be super-dusty, and you can’t leave your shoes outside of your tent or they’ll get even super-dustier.

Put a car trunk organizer by the entrance

You may also find it useful to have a car trunk organizer at the front interior of your tent. Use it for placing things you might want to grab or drop off without much fuss. Car trunk organizers work great for this function!

Use wool afghan blankets as carpets (and dust trappers): Pro tip!

While you can’t avoid dust getting in your tent, you can decrease how dusty it feels inside your tent. The trick? Wool afghans with some holes in them. The afghans allow dust to fall to the floor of your tent, thus keeping your walking surface clean and comfy.

This is truly one of my favorite pro tips to share with people. See, with the wool afghan the dust doesn’t accumulate and pile up in your tent. Instead, it settles into the afghan and onto the floor of your tent. Plus, wool afghans are soft and they provide a sense of having a nice carpet in your tent. (Again, anything you can do to replicate a feeling of home in your tent will, I believe, help you feel more settled in what is a really big and rather active city with a big open sky above.)

You can get wool afghans at thrift stores, and I’d recommend getting one or two. (Or three or four.) Thinking of them as carpets, make sure they are large enough to cover the main area where you’ll be walking in your tent.

Another reason I’m a big fan of people bringing wool afghan floor coverings is that in the event weather conditions become extremely cold, you have an extra layer of warmth you can turn to in an emergency. There are balmy years for sure with some chilly nights, and then there are downright chilly years with chilly days and super-cold nights. Things can go either way, though one thing is for sure: Being cold in the desert sucks.

If you can’t find wool, acrylic is (I guess) okay, but wool is, hands down, preferable because of its warmth factor, durability and homey-ness.

Put a table or bin outside your tent

I like to place one of my shipping bins right at the outside of my tent, yet still inside my tent’s vestibule. Many times you’ll probably want to “just drop something off” or “just put something down” without wanting to go into your tent. Or maybe someone wants to return an item to you that they borrowed, and they don’t want to open up your tent while you’re not there.

This exterior small table works great for such situations. If you don’t have a protected area to put this small table, such as a vestibule, then don’t implement this idea because your table will blow away eventually (as will everything else you place on it). No MOOP.