Jeff’s room….

Since this house is over 30 years old, it didn’t come with a mudroom. I doubt very many houses built back then came with mudrooms unless they were actual farmhouses. I lived in an actual farmhouse until I was 6, and we called that the “utility room.” We had a utility room growing up in the big city too (2,500 people). It didn’t look as fancy as modern “mudrooms” are these days, but it was very useful. It was a place for my father to clean off after coming home from farming.

Our current house had neither a mudroom nor a utility room. It had a coat closet located directly in front of the door to the garage. Knowing my husband and his propensity to leave papers and detritus everywhere in the house, I decided to turn that closet into a mini mudroom. (We have another coat closet for guests around the corner from this closet, so we didn’t need both).

I pitched the idea to Richard, our contractor, and he had that thing partially done within a day. He built a bench with a shelf that houses shoes and baskets and is strong enough to sit on to put on shoes.

It’s also large enough that if Jeff gets too irritating, I can tell him to sleep on it.

It hasn’t come to that yet. Though when one of his giant piles of mail and papers went sprawling all over the floor for the third time, I wanted to find a whole new place for him to live. Instead, I came up with the mini mudroom idea, which I think will save our marriage.

Jeff can put all his papers and mail into one of the large baskets. He can put his mowing shoes, which are disgusting, under the bench where I won’t have to look at them. He can also hang his coat on a hook instead of the back of a chair.

In other words, I am immensely happy with this new arrangement, and it will probably save Jeff’s life or, at the minimum, our marriage.

The baskets that I’m using are ones that I’ve had for over 20 years. I purchased them from Pottery Barn eons ago and had previously painted them a darker brown, which matches the dark flooring in the library close-by.

I ordered hooks from the internet that are rounded instead of pointy, so they won’t leave that weird mark in our jackets. I also found a quilt that I used in our spare bedroom at our former house that we will eventually make into a cushion.  

So far, we are loving our new mini mudroom. Sometimes, marital solutions are just a hammer away, and thankfully in this case, the hammer was used to add a new cool feature to our home and not to send a spouse into eternity….

One crisis averted!