Whoever came up with the name of Mudroom was 100% -gold star correct. Our Mud Room is the dirtiest room in our home -- especially in winter and spring. Our Mud Room is right off the garage/workshop. All of our coats, boots, shoes, my husband's work clothes and hunting gear live in there too. No matter how hard I try to keep this area clean, it's a giant dirt fest after a few days.
So, why am I writing tips on how to have a beautiful mud room? Good question. When I come up with an answer I'll let you know.
To me, a beautiful mud room is a serviceable, well organized, room that meets our needs. A beautiful mud room doesn't have to look like it came out the pages of Martha Stewart's Living magazine. I'm pretty sure rooms that look like that never get used, or at least not by families with pets, children or husbands that earn a living by getting dirty.
What our Mud Room is like
Our mudroom is painted a calm, soothing blue. When you first enter you see the washer and dryer, so I try to keep those clutter free and wiped down. To the left is the massively long coat and boot rack my husband made. If your mud room is going to house all of your coats and boots, you might as well have them neatly organized. It's much easier to find just what we need this way. Plus it's a great way to keep my husband's dirtier work and hunting clothing from being drug through the house to the bedroom where the rest of the dirty laundry is.
Opposite the coat rack, we have a floor to ceiling built in storage area. These shelves tend to be a catch-all for all sorts of things. It's a real challenge and requires fairly regular attention to keep the shelves relatively neat so we can find things. As hard as it is to keep the area neat, it's terrific to have a place like this to keep odds and ends that don't quite belong in the garage but don't seem to belong in the house either. On the wall behind the entry door is a bank of four small cabinets where I keep laundry supplies, paper towels, coolers, light bulbs, rags, and such.
How to conquer dirt
The primary source of dirt in our mudroom comes from foot traffic. In order to help reduce the dirt or at least trap it, we have throw rugs in front of the doors and near the boot/shoe area. Every week the rugs need to be shaken out and vacuumed and the floor washed. If I am careful to do this weekly, then the dirt stays at a tolerable level. In the summer I can go two weeks. It helps too, if I can run a vacuum over the floor once in the middle of the week.
Beautification
I love the paint colours in our laundry room, but that's about as far as we've gotten on beauty part. We haven't done anything with this room other than painting since we moved in. We would like to put in a new floor, and paint the cabinets white. I would also like to find something pretty to hang on the wall over the washer and dryer. But, for now, this room is beautiful to me, because it does everything I need it to.
This post is linked to WFMW.
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