Keeping a mudroom clean is an exercise in futility
My mudroom is a disaster.
I’m not sure why I’m surprised. I mean, the name “mudroom,” itself, discusses the worst form of dirt and is suggestive of the space used to try to contain it. I looked it up, and one website suggested that they are only an American custom found generally in middle- and upper-class homes of the Northeast and Midwest. It also noted that they also can be called utility rooms, and are used to store snow shovels, kitty litter and freezers, in addition to boots and coats. It also says that they are typically not by the entrance used by guests.
I guess we did it wrong, then, because we have no room in there for most of the above listed items, and we also encourage visitors to use that door to enter the house.
This room houses our wood stove, and therefore, our wood supply. It is where we don and doff our coats and boots. It is where the dogs sleep on nights too cold for them to be expected to sleep in the barn. It is a dirty place. (Most of the year, it is respectably presentable, but in winter I make no promises.)
Each of us has two pairs of boots for outdoors. One, a neoprene-based boot that is waterproof for slopping through the cow pasture and standing water as needed, and the other a pair of regular work boots that allow more mobility for chores that are not so wet. That means there are eight pairs of boots in that room at any given time.
No one wears a simple winter coat, either. Everyone layers up with thermal shirts and sweatshirts until they are as bundled as Ralphie’s brother in “A Christmas Story” but have the means to shed layers if they get too warm. That means anywhere between six and twelve shirts are peeled off in that room every evening.
Yes, we have pegs for clothes, but if they got anything wet, they must spread everything out to dry. And the boots must be lined up near the stove for the same reason.
Remember the year we had in 2018? Record rainfalls? It was always wet?
That means there have been various levels of wet clothes in the mudroom for a year.
Throw in the firewood and the dogs, and you have a room that is a nightmare to keep cleaned. I sweep. I attempt to dust. I pick up and hang up clothes as they dry.
No one can tell. It is an effort in futility.
I am praying for a slightly drier year in 2019. Not so dry that crops don’t grow, gardens flounder, and creeks can’t sustain fish, but dry enough that I can get caught up with the never-ending stream of muddy pants and shirts in my mudroom (and then laundry room).
In the meantime, if you visit my home, remember that the mudroom is – unfortunately – located at the main entrance to our home. That I sweep up in there at least once a day. That I am aware it is a train wreck.
And that if you can forgive its appearance, the rest of my house is clean enough to enter unafraid.
Laura Zoeller can be reached at zoeller5@verizon.net.