"The world is mud luscious and puddle wonderful" ~ e.e. cummings
I have come to see that the mudroom, that ubiquitous liminal space in a home, is very much what it says it is when living in the country. Especially in spring. Especially when spring offers various kinds of wetness. And especially when your soil is clay. A place to shed the accoutrements of snow, rain, and mud and transition to the warmth and ambience of the kitchen.
In our previous city/suburban homes the 'mudroom' was merely an entryway. A space to place shoes barely dirtied by the outside world, to put son's sports equipment in varying states of stink, to hang your guests' coats and the dogs' leashes, to collect the mail and magazines and advertisement detritus that came through the mail slot. The floors were gleaming tile. A designer-like mirror hung for that last minute tidying of hair or scarf before scooting off to the office.
The closest that a previous mudroom actually served the purpose of mudroom was when we lived in an old farmhouse on the prairies. It had once sat in the middle of hectares of fields. But over time the land had been sold off in smaller and smaller packages until the old farmhouse was now a city house and sat on a 25-foot lot - hemmed in by an urban lawn and houses shoulder to shoulder. The sunporch room, hanging off the front of the house and threatening for years to fall completely off, served the purpose of mudroom, slightly reminiscent of its original purpose. There our kids' bikes nested, tires tangled. Wild cats were fed and sheltered from winter storms. Muddy boots and snow-soaked socks were kicked off and left to dry to salty hardness. There was a crawl space below this room. Often in the spring you could smell the slightly-sweet smell of rotting mice carcasses that had died there over the winter or the insistent tomcat smell that stayed even after the cats had returned to the prairie in the warming weather. It was the ultimate definition of 'clutter'. A threshold. That 'brink' between outside and inside.
Here at Fat Hummingbird Farm, we once again have a real mudroom. There are hooks for coats and hats, a bench upon which to sit to wrest off mud-caked boots, a reused pot to hold walking sticks (it no longer holds umbrellas - an urban accessory that I learned scares cows badly and can make one stick out absurdly as a former city slicker. A hood does fine on a rainy walk to the mailbox, thank you. And doesn't traumatize cows). The mudroom has an attached bathroom to rinse off garden detritus or to throw filthy clothes in the washer, and now to house the cat's litter box. There is a mirror, not like the one in that suburban entryway. This one is easily removed from the wall for a quick wipe and clean after flapping one's hands dry too messily; or used to find and remove those pesky leaves and twigs that seem to delight in riding in one's hair. And the light in the mudroom bathroom is particularly bright - easier to search for those pants-clinging ticks before entering the house further.
Here in the country, the mudroom is a constant necessity. The spring rains and our hayfield that is currently a run-off bog mean that our boots are often covered in a viscous clay mud. When it dries it leaves a chalky, slippery dust on the tiles and crusty, flaking clods in the tractor-like treads of our boots. Spring snow is puddle-prone and melts quickly into small ponds about your boots, making the mudroom floor a marshland. Mud-time, mud-season, whatever it is that you want to call it, you will bring the outside inside - inevitably.
As spring gets further entrenched at Fat Hummingbird Farm the clutter increases in the mudroom. Mason bee houses sit on the bench, awaiting their placement around the farmyard. Huge sacks of cat litter await a place to be stored. The bench is stacked with unread papers destined to be garden mulch. The hooks are draped with not one but usually at least two kinds of jackets as winter cold is not quite gone but spring warmth is not quite sincere enough to be trusted. The winter parkas and the light hoodie - both with knit hats or mittens stuffed in their pockets. The mudroom is a repository for things that don't quite fit elsewhere in the house. It is a curio cabinet of oddments and all sorts - like the long extendable claw-like picker-upper thingie that needs to be at hand but doesn't really have a place. It resides in the reused pot with the walking sticks. It is nearby so it can retrieve the slippery steel coffee pot when it accidentally but inevitably gets tossed into the backdoor compost bin along with the coffee grounds. The bin is four feet deep and I am not going after that coffee pot with my limited arm reach. I could fall in . . .
Mudroom as liminal space. It snares the debris of outside before it becomes inside debris. It is the place to go it you can't find something - like the sausages that came in from the car but didn't make it as far as the refrigerator. It is the place to stop a rambunctious animal for a foot wipe before going into the house. Best of all, it is a sanctum from the weakness of trying to live spotlessly. Keep your elegant urban entryways. I need some space for the bat house before it is hung and my odd sock - the other lost in the mud.
