Mud Rooms and Back Porches

Woke up a little after 4:00 a.m., trying to go back to sleep when I began thinking about my granddaughter's new mudroom.

I had seen pictures of it in progress and finished, but was looking forward to seeing it when we went to great-granddaughter Brynley's birthday party last month. I just couldn't visualize the changes made at the back entrance. I needed to see it in person. Unfortunately, I was suffering the effects of spring allergies, plus the additional threat due to the coronavirus outbreak, so I'll be waiting a little longer to see her wonderful new addition.

Mudrooms seem to be a big deal in new and newly remodeled homes right now. I can totally understand the desire/need for them. Especially with a family. A mudroom would help contain the chaos of coats, boots, shoes, sports equipment, etc. upon entering the house and keep it from spreading dirt and clutter any further.

I started thinking how nice a mudroom would have been in our home when I was growing up. Then I realized we had one! It was called the back porch.

I barely remember what it was like when I was little. That's the doorway and some covered over windows of the back porch of our farm house in the background. I remember isinglass windows instead of real glass panes and tar paper over the door and windows, though in this pic, it looks more like cardboard.

I don't remember what year the real windows were installed, probably after the war years (WWII) when money and supplies were more plentiful. The door to the outside was new, too. It had two separate parts, one a screen section for warm weather and the other with glass panes for cold weather. There was a special rack suspended from the rafters in the wash house to hold the off-season door insert and keep it safe until time to switch them out again. (Built by Dad, I assume.)

More than half of the floor space on the back porch was a flat 'cellar' door to the basement. It was seldom open until the basement was finished, then it was always open, secured by a bent wire hook so it wouldn't fall on anyone.

The walls had double rows of hooks, ones high up for Mom and Dad's coats and coveralls, lower ones for us kids. Mops, brooms, flyswatters, yardsticks and other miscellaneous tools also hung on the porch. There was a permanent built in broom hanger in which Mom's 'good' broom always hung.

Hanging on nails under the windows were the egg basket, milk buckets, and water bucket. The coal bucket and cob basket sat on the floor along with the ubiquitous slop bucket - the pail that held potato, carrot and apple peels, grapefruit and orange rinds and anything else that the pigs might possibly eat in their swill.

Floor space was also used up by all the everyday shoes and boots of a family of six. If you think that back porch didn't keep a lot of dirt and clutter out of the house, you should have had to clean it every week or so.

I am certain Katrina loves her new mudroom and can't imagine it ever being as dirty as our psuedo one, but I don't see how we could have managed without the old back porch.