August 27, 2018 – Nomenclature, or what is in a name?

         Nomenclature, noun:  the term or terms applied to someone or something.

         Since I’ve lived in several regions of this country over the course of my life time I do realize that nomenclature is often regional or societal [social status] driven.

         The “eye of the stove” for some means the burner on the top, for me it means the oven window.  My southern friends had a good laugh with that one.

         Face cloth vs. wash cloth.

         Hose pipe vs. garden hose

         Vehicle vs. car or truck

         Or, one time I reserved a rental “car” and they delivered an “SUV”. 

         You get the idea, I called my living room the “drawing room” back at Trojan Lane because I had it done in English Hunt style that sported hunting horn book ends, and hunting club prints. It was my idea of a drawing room that I’d read about in countless Agatha Christie mystery books. The locals either shot me a questioning look, or let out an almost inaudible gasp.  A few laughed and many just shook their heads – obviously, they felt I was putting on airs.

         At this home, I call it our “day room” as the home is designed with a formal living room [which I turned into an office – and will be turned back into a living room this winter when I am not gardening]. We don’t have a family living here, just two people, and it is the room – or actually the open area of the large kitchen and large living area - where we spend most of our day. Therefore, I call it our “day room”.  I image people will think I am putting on airs again.

         But, this blog is about the term “mudroom”.   But, first some personal history so you know where I am coming from.

My Mom and Dad had a cellar – we didn’t call it a basement – where the washing machine and dryer were.  We accessed it by the ‘cellar’ stairs or in the summer when Dad was working in the yard and gardens, through the walk-in cellar door – wide enough for a lawn tractor.   

         In the summer, when we were kids, we had chores and one was hanging out the laundry on the line, which Martha Stewart coined as “drying yard” about 20 years ago putting a new spin on it.

         So, my parents didn’t have a mudroom, per se, as it was in the cellar.  We didn’t call it the laundry room either, as it was the entire cellar with the washer and dryer in one corner.

         At the first home we rented, I naturally called the back entrance that had the washer and dryer the “mudroom” because we would walk into that room and could kick off our shoes if we wanted to, but seldom did. 

         At my first home in this county, I had a basement, which I also called a cellar on many occasions because that word is fixed in my vocabulary. I called my cellar a basement because it had three casement windows and a door like the main house upstairs. We whitewashed the walls and made it an extra room where we had the kerosene heater to warm up the basement and thereby warming up the upper level of the house during the winter and especially during the ice storms when we lost electricity. 

It had sun shining in during the days where one corner had the washer and dryers and a folding laundry table, and the other corner had my husband’s workbench and tools.  It was still a basement or cellar as it had a cement floor.

         My current home has a “mudroom” which is the back entrance and has a washer and dryer and additional refrigerator and baskets for our trash recycling.  I also have my pots and pans hung up on the walls in that room and it does have the electrical circuit breaker box.  It is rather small.  I drop my muddy shoes in the mudroom.  It gets dirty quickly with clutter of all kinds.

         I was reading a magazine article, yes, the same article I cited yesterday about REAL LIFE from the editor’s letter and I chuckled aloud.   Let me quote it for you.

“ . . . not everyone can have a luxurious back entryway like Amanda Reynal’s mudroom (page 35). In fact, until I started working in magazines, I had never heard the term.  My mom called the room near our back door a utility room.”

         Utility room – HMMMM – a utility to me is the electric and telephone as in “pay your utility bills” on a monthly basis.  Why does anyone call a room with a washer and dryer a utility room, why not a laundry room?

         I’d never heard it called utility room, so part of me wondered what part of the country the editor had grown up in or currently lived in.

         But, since I have a mudroom I immediately flipped to page 35 to peruse the pictures.  SWANK is what I would call the layout in the magazine.  A huge room and nothing like my little mudroom, my little “muddy” room, my little room that has more clutter than any other room in the house. 

Yes, my little mudroom that has the only wallpaper in the house, that expensive English Ivy wallpaper by Waverly.  The only room I tried to wallpaper in that expensive, difficult wallpaper . . . . where I managed only to complete two walls before I ran out of money and patience.

         What was that phrase my Mom used to say?  “You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.”

         I will continue to call it my mudroom – it isn’t elegant like the photo display in that recent magazine, but I sure did try to make a silk purse out of it with that expensive English Ivy wallpaper. 

Yes, it is worthy of the name, mudroom, as it has ‘muddy shoes’ or mud on the floor just about at all times.  I call it like it see it, literally, my mudroom.