146: My Messy Mudroom Isn’t Working! Or Is It?

My Messy Mudroom (And Why It’s Actually Working)

I want to talk about my messy mudroom, and why it’s not failing, it’s actually succeeding. I snapped a photo of it in its completely authentic state, no staging, no sprucing up first, shoes and clothes on the floor despite plenty of visible hooks, a book bag abandoned nearby, baskets with things spilling out, lockers filled with random overflow. If you’re picturing that scene, you might assume this space doesn’t work for my family. I’d argue the opposite.

A workhorse room is supposed to get messy

The photo shows a framework, not a failure. We have four kids and three lockers, so seven years ago I split them by age, oldest two sharing one, youngest two sharing another, and dedicated the third entirely to the dog and a landing zone for keys and things that needed to leave the house again. The closed cabinets at the bottom were originally meant as hidden shoe storage, which I never actually used that way, because hidden storage is a non-starter for ADHD brains. Bend over, open the door, put the shoes in, close the door, that’s a four-step process standing between a kid and actually putting shoes away while they’re running late out the door. Instead, I use that hidden space for things I reach for less often, sunscreen, bug spray, spare lunchboxes for when one inevitably gets left at school.

The literal purpose of a mudroom is to contain the mess

Original mudrooms existed so muddy boots and winter gear had somewhere to land before the rest of the house. Its entire job is to get messy so nowhere else has to. If you look at your own mudroom and see a mess, that’s not evidence it’s broken, it’s evidence it’s doing exactly what it was built for. It’s a dam. Everything you see there is everything that didn’t end up on your kitchen counters instead.

Messy signs of life aren’t a problem to solve

The belief that a space “doesn’t work” because it gets messy has always struck me as a little sad. Toys strewn through the house mean you have kids actively living in it. White sneakers get scuffed because someone’s out there actually wearing them, not because the system failed. Ask anyone living in true solitude whether they’d welcome a little mess as a sign of life happening around them. Life is inherently messy, and getting angry at the mess is really just resisting the fact that life is happening in your home.

Why this is an after picture, not a before picture

We’re at the end of a full school year, and I can point to exactly why this messy room worked all year long. Hardcopy textbooks issued at the start of the year went straight into the lockers, and now that they need to be returned, we know exactly where to dig for them. Two baskets on the top shelf serve as a completely unfiled catch-all for schoolwork kids think they might need to study later. There’s no folder system, no labeling, just an empty basket at the start of the year that fills up and gets dug through when finals roll around. It was never worth the time to build an elaborate filing system for papers that get glanced at for two seconds during review.

A seasonal reset, not a daily battle

I only do a real deep clean of this room three times a year: right before school starts, when baskets get emptied and hooks get cleared and we assess whether backpacks and lunchboxes survived the year; during the winter break between semesters, spending just a few minutes emptying bags and clearing out anything from the top baskets that’s no longer needed; and again once the school year fully ends. In between those points, I just let the room work. Anyone walking through that door is close enough to know life happens here, and anyone coming through the front door never sees it in the first place, so there’s nothing to perform for.

Your practical, actionable step

Look at your own workhorse room, mudroom, laundry room, whatever catches your family’s daily mess, and ask whether it’s actually containing the chaos and keeping it out of your main living spaces. If it is, it’s working, even if it looks messy. Pick just one or two natural reset points in the year, like the start and end of school, rather than trying to keep it pristine every single day.

Until next time, continue to choose joy.