By Elizabeth Razzi
Sunday, July 1, 2007

In horror movies, the doorway to hell is always in the basement. If anyone should come across a doorway to heaven, I bet it would open to a mudroom.

Around these parts we don't get that much mud. (Outer Loudoun County readers, please pause for a deep breath. Those of you with mud often have barns as well. You're pros.) But all of us get plenty of junk mail, magazines, briefcases, backpacks and dusty baseball bags. We have at least our share of cellphones, iPods and BlackBerrys. Since Friday, we can throw the occasional iPhone into the mix. (Do you think iPhones will reduce the gadget count? Don't be silly. Somehow, they will spawn accessories.) And don't forget all those uncomfortable dress shoes that get kicked off the moment we cross the threshold.

The humble mudroom is a key feature sought by new-home buyers and remodelers. "Over the past five years we've seen the emergence of the mudroom and the re-emergence of the pantry," said Stephen Melman, director of economic services for the National Association of Home Builders. "It keeps the clutter down. A mudroom does for clothing and stuff what a kitchen pantry does for plates and utensils."

Greg Wiedemann, principal of Wiedemann Architects in Bethesda, calls such a handy little space the "secondary entrance."

It's the entrance the family uses most often, and it's usually attached to the garage, driveway or side of the house. Homeowners and buyers are asking for plenty of attention to be paid to these spaces.

"It's one of the most important spaces in a house," Wiedemann said.

In October, Wiedemann won an award from the Potomac Valley chapter of the American Institute of Architects for a modern home he designed in the Tulip Hill neighborhood of Bethesda. It's an elegant structure of wood and glass that makes the most of a site with winter views of the Potomac River. What I wanted to hear about, though, was the mudroom.

Nancy and Mark Gross, along with their children, Mitchell, 12, and Abby, 10, have been living in that lovely new house since December 2004. Before building it, they had lived in a nearby center-hall Colonial that didn't have a formal entry foyer or a coat closet. The space inside the front door was basically the landing for the stairs. "I think we used the dining-room table as a mail repository," Nancy said.

They wanted to remedy those problems in their new house. What they got was a space where they could try to limit the clutter, she said.

The room, located between the carport and kitchen, features custom-built shoe cubbies and cabinets made of natural maple. Each child has a set of three wall-mounted hooks for jackets and backpacks. The parents share one set of three hooks. Kids' backpacks never leave the room, unless they're on the way to school. That makes getting out the door much easier in the morning.

There is a bar-height counter where Nancy and Mark can stand and sort the day's mail. A pull-out recycling bin and waste basket are handy. There is a built-in power strip for charging phones and other gadgets. They even have a spot where their key rings live.

A laundry room, with a laundry chute from the upstairs and a floor drain to accommodate accidents, is adjacent to the mud room and can be hidden behind pocket doors. A closet under a stairway holds the kids' sports gear.

The Pennsylvania bluestone that was used for the walkway is carried through a glass door into the mudroom and laundry area. Wiedemann, the architect, liked that because it gave continuity from outdoors to indoors. Nancy Gross likes it because it hides dirt. "It's really impervious to anything," she said. "You can barely even see that it's dirty."

After using the space for 2 1/2 years, Gross has found that she would like more hooks on the walls and, especially, more shoe cubbies. "As far as I'm concerned, there's no limit to the number of shoe cubbies you need. We don't wear shoes in the house," she said.

If you're doing a whole-house construction project, as the Gross family did, it's easy to plan a space that will serve as the mudroom and customize it to serve your needs. The Gross family, for example, has no need for an area where they can take care of pets. For other households, that may be a key function. Some mudrooms include a low-mounted faucet and a shower pan built into the floor, which handles dog-washing or boot-rinsing. And people often dedicate a spot in the mudroom for pet food bowls and those big sacks of kibble that fill them.

A mudroom doesn't even need to be a room at all. "A mudroom can just be a room or a hallway off the garage or off the most-used entryway," said Ronda Royalty, a certified kitchen and bath designer with Stuart Kitchens in Timonium. "It can be as simple as hooks on the wall for the dog leash."

A few pieces of furniture could even do the job, if you can find a space.

L.L. Bean, the outdoors retailer based in Maine, where spring is commonly referred to as "mud season," even has a Web page devoted to mudroom furniture. A Mission-style bench with baskets for mittens or shoes sells for $299, and you can pair it with a matching shelf with coat hooks for another $169. It also sells a tall, painted wood locker for $329. The items are available only through the catalogue; they're not stocked in Bean's retail stores.

The goal of the mudroom, especially in this area where your shoes are more likely to track in spent azalea petals than honest-to-goodness mud, is to quarantine all the clutter that comes into your home. Find a way to do that, and you've found a little spot of heaven.

E-mail Elizabeth Razzi atrazzie@washpost.com.