Much More Than A Mudroom

We’ve all heard of the mudroom, but have you heard about the “All-Room?”

When I grew up, we had a room for “all the other stuff.” It wasn’t a storage room or the place where you dropped your muddy boots, your fishing rod and your sail gear. It was an interactive room for things you didn’t want out elsewhere or for activities that might interfere with what was going on in the rest of the house.

If I had my way, the All-Room could and should replace the atrocious “mom desks” that were considered an upgrade in the 90s kitchen. It would do away with the unsightly file drawers and printers that crowd living rooms and master bedrooms and leave homeowners scratching their heads over how to deal with them. They know they need the stuff and the functions they provide, but they don’t want them crowding spaces allotted for sleeping or entertaining. The All-Room can be a cross-breed between a home office, a hobby/crafts center and a recreational room if you have the space for it—or it can be an efficient, tidy space squeezed in between other rooms in the house.

Because the operative word here is “efficient,” the perfect All-Room is close to the center of the house and functions as a hub.

It’s the ideal place for a centrally-located electronics hub, the sewing machine and the family archives. A bank of cabinets can provide the foundation and when topped with a practical and amply-sized counter, this storage furniture becomes the most important piece of the All-Room puzzle and should be customized to your needs. Outfit it with drawers to store those art class masterpieces and hanging file folders for anything from homework assignments to mortgage papers. Make space for a shredder and a pull-out shelf for the sewing machine. The work surface can support a central printer/fax/scanner that everyone in the house can access. If you have room, add a few counter stools. With less than 8 feet of storage, you can take away the burden from other rooms and allow them to look great and function the way they were intended. Add an electronics closet for the TV/cable, surround sound and the home security system and you have everything nearby and handy. Need an extra refrigerator? That, too, can go in the All-Room. Depending on the size and layout of adjacent rooms—and how concealed you want the fixtures and equipment to be—you can make the All-Room look like a tailored ante-chamber with luscious wood and lighting (as in the picture above) or a functional and technical space with open shelving where everything is visible.