A Landing Strip on Steroids: Designing and Executing a Mud Area

In muddy weather, the traditional "landing strip" - a small area devoted to people entering a dwelling - may not be enough to cleanly handle the transition between outdoors and indoors. In these situations, a bigger, meaner landing strip is called for. In houses that can afford such a luxury, this is known as the "mud room". However, many apartment and smaller space dwellers don't have this luxury. With some clever design, a mud hall, mud entryway or mud foyer can be created to be both useful and as easily navigable as possible.

A foul-weather-area of a home is commonly called a mud room. As the name indicates, this is a room dedicated to the transition between the indoors and the outdoors, specifically to cleaning oneself up before transitioning into the indoors proper. It is nearly indispensable in areas where there is a lot of dirt, mud and/or snow likely to be tracked in. It's where people can give up their coats and hats and boots, dogs can shake themselves and get dried off and children can have an area where they can be cleaned up before being allowed to run on the carpets of the home.

The key to creating your mud area is a clear boundary between the area and the rest of the house. If you're lucky enough to have a back door that enters into an easily converted room or separated area of the home, half of your work is done already. Otherwise, you might have to do some work on the entrance area itself to make it able to handle the ingress of dirty boots and paws.

The first thing is to look at your flooring. Carpeting is going to soak up the dirt and mud and become discolored fairly quickly. Consider putting down tile, linoleum or wood flooring throughout your mud area. A mat where people can scrape their footwear is more easily taken outside and hosed off than wall-to-wall carpets.

If you absolutely cannot remove the carpeting in your landing area, try buying some plastic carpet covers. Originally meant for keeping carpets clean during renovations, these often come with a time limit of use, after which they must be taken up and new ones applied. These are meant for synthetic carpet fibers. You could also try buying some heavy plastic and cutting it to the shape of your entryway to help contain dirt and mess.

Your walls will probably fare best if they are covered with easily washable paint and wallpaper. They will also help you out if you can install a number of hooks on them to hold coats, hats, collars and leads. A towel rack accommodating the needs of drying oneself off as well as any canine companions would be a useful and charming accent as long as one takes care to indicate which towel is for humans and which for pets. A plastic wall cover (a shower curtain cut to fit a rack just below the hooks will do well) and floor tray should be sufficient to catch any drips coming from wet clothing.

Built-in shelves and/or cubby holes will also help people keep track of their belongings. If shelving cannot be accommodated, a table should at least be instituted, preferably with drawers for the myriad items that seem to be left during entrances and exits. Dual purposing tables and shelves can be a great space saver - fitting boot shelves or shoe racks underneath them is one idea.

If you are lucky enough to have sufficient room, placing the washer and dryer in or near your mud area can make a big difference when trying to take care of dirty clothing and changes into new apparel. It might be helpful to store clean, dry "lounging clothing" in the laundry area to temporarily take the place of the attire to be cleaned.

A mud area is one of the best ways to combat undue dirt and moisture from being tracked in by people coming into the home from the outside. If you have a room that can be designated a mud room, congratulations! If you don't, don't despair; there's a lot you can do with any area that serves as an entrance to your home.

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The title of this article comes from an Apartment Therapy article about a charming mud room that has a dog shower built into it, so that dogs can be easily cleaned off before they are allowed to tromp happily into the living areas of the home. You can find it at apartmenttherapy.com by searching "landing strip on steroids".