How To Create A Utility Mudroom To Enhance Your Home & Organise Your Life
If you are lucky enough to have a utility room or small porch area by your door and you want a permanent well organised solution to the problem of what to do with that constant stream of muddy boots & shoes, wet umbrellas and coats entering your home every day, you might want to jump on the latest trend of creating a mudroom in your home.
As we all seem to be leading busier lives than ever before and most of us have to juggle some kind of family life & work life today; anything that can help to achieve a better more organised home that has “a place for everything and everything in it’s place” has to be a good thing.
So we’ve gathered together some of the best ideas we’ve found for utility mudrooms that offer you both style & functionality for an easier way to manage the every day comings and goings of family & friends.
Step 1: Assess Your Space
With new home design lacking in utility spaces these days if you are lucky enough to have a utility room it’s by far the best place for a mudroom, especially if it has an easy to clean hard floor surface.
The term mudroom might be an unfamiliar one in the UK but in the USA it’s high on most families wish lists for helping to keep the home cleaner and tidier more of the time.
To turn a humble utility or laundry room into a great mudroom first you need to assess your space.
What extra storage could you add to increase the number of options your utility space could actually deal with?
- Shoes and boots. (When they are muddy, wet or stored away)
- Coats, hats & scarfs.
- Washing & ironing (laundry).
- Quick sewing repairs.
- Handbags and shopping bags.
- Utility cleaning products, vacuum cleaner, mops, buckets, brushes, dusters and micro-fibre cloths.
- Gardening gloves & small hand tools.
- Batteries, mini-tool kit for small home maintenance tasks like hanging pictures or changing batteries.
- Aromatherapy and candles.
- Laundry storage and supplies.
- School bags, P.E. kits, artwork, crafts & homework assignments that all arrive home unexpectedly.
- Pet care items.
- Tupperware, bin bags, lunch boxes and miscellaneous items
Your utility mudroom is an essential part of good home management. It’s likely to be used every day, several times a day and is an important area that has to function well for you and your family needs.
Step 2: Declutter Your Mudroom & Revamp Or Create New Storage
If you can add a cupboard with doors, shelving and storage baskets for storing extra coats and seasonal items when not in use you can limit the number of items to be stored and organised to one or two per member of your family.
This helps keep the task in hand more manageable.
*As far as I’m aware you can only wear one pair of shoes or boots at a time 😉
Vertical spaces are your best friend in your utility mudroom as most items you will want to organise & store will require hanging and are likely to be long items such as:-
- Coats
- Umbrellas
- Brooms, Mops & Vacuum Cleaners
- Ironing board
- Rucksacks
- Dog leads etc.
Step 3 : Clean & Refresh All Paintwork And Deep Clean All Areas
Whenever you purge an area of your home and declutter it you have the perfect opportunity to deep clean the whole area.
If you want to freshen the paint on the walls, ceilings, skirting, architraves and doors too, now is the time to tackle it head on.
It’s this part of the process that will give your new utility mudroom that real new home look & feel that you love when you visit a show home. It will also allow you to see your new space as a completely blank canvas so you can easily see how the existing space can be improved on and better utilised as you new family hub mudroom.
Step 4: Create Cupboards & Shelving For Organising The “Big Stuff”
Once you have the large items organised, it’s time to turn your attention to the smaller items and the more you can organise and store away out of sight the better.
With the ability today to order almost anything online and have it delivered to your doorstep within a day or two, finding colour coordinated baskets and storage bins that go with your decor isn’t going to be too difficult.
Step 5: Add Shelving And Decanters For Everyday Items Made To Look Beautiful
One of the easiest ways to update your utility room and turn it into a lovely family organisation area and mudroom is to make it as pretty as it is practical, just like any other room in your home.
Decant your detergent and fabric softener into clear or coordinating jars and recycle the cardboard boxes, bags or containers they came in.
Add baskets for stray socks, buttons and any other items you find lurking in your laundry. Create baskets or storage options for anything that you use frequently and for those items that arrive back after school which are always the main things that end up cluttering your space.
Step 6 : Make Your New Mudroom Part Of Your Home With Great Decor
Just because a utility mudroom is a functional area of your home doesn’t mean it has to be any less beautiful. Such is the demand today to have anything & everything “Pinnable to Pinterest” or Instagrammable.
After a decade of gathering “stuff” we are all merrily de-cluttering and organising our homes to a degree (pre-internet) that was impossible to do before.
Your local store only ever stocked what it thought people might need or buy but nowadays with inspiration everywhere in just a few clicks we’ve become far more ambitious about what can or cannot be achieved in our homes.
Let’s face it if you want TEAL coloured micro-fibre cloths to go with that piece of artwork in your new mudroom chances are you can find them! And unfortunately that appetite for choice has been part of the reason the High Street has struggled to play a part in our lives in recent years.
Step 7: Demonstrate And Involve Your Family Members With The New Routines
A frequently forgotten part of keeping a new well organised space clean & tidy is forgetting to involve everyone who uses the space up to speed with how to use it.
I find children respond well to structure.
And by making sure they know where to hang their coat, put their school bag and shoes when they come home you are are your way to establishing good habits for them and an easier life for you.
Make it easy for them & it’s easy for you!
And the same applies to any adults by the way.
Don’t let all your hard work go to waste. A quick family meeting and introduction to how your new utility mudroom works is all that is needed.
Bonus: For One Of The Best Books Around On This Kind Of Thing & More
Nikki Boyd’s home is not only beautiful but it is beautifully organised too. For one of the classiest books I’ve seen in a long time check out her new book Beautifully Organised from Amazon.
Summary
- Reassess your utility as a potential mudroom family hub for an organised space that will keep your home & life straight.
- Having a place for everything and everything in it’s place is a timeless approach to a well organised home that needs to keep pace with today’s busy work lives.
- Mudrooms are high on most USA family dream home wish lists right now so it’s an investment that will repay you in multiple ways, beautify your home and help it stay that way.
As always we look forward to your thoughts and comments below or join in the conversation on our Facebook Page! Or Use The Contact Us Page To Email Us With Your Enquiry
