DO YOU HAVE A MENTAL MUDROOM?

I haven’t watched it in awhile, but I can really get in to some HGTV.

I love the house hunting shows...

I love the renovations...

And I really like the mansion tours.

And, strange though it may seem, I LOVE a good mudroom.

There’s just something about a zone that’s specifically designed to serve as a segue from the outside world into the inner sanctum of the safe and happy place that is your home that really makes me happy.

It’s so nice to have a clearly partitioned transition area that I consciously equipped with coat hooks...

A place for bags and umbrellas...

An organized storage area for everyone’s shoes...

And extra space for those miscellaneous necessities of daily life that shouldn’t be left outside but that don’t quite seem to belong inside, either.

And then, of course, if we’re going to get really fancy and farmstead chic, the pièce de résistance of the whole thing: the fully outfitted and understatedly aesthetic dog washing station.

*Swoon*

We had a pretty modest entry way in my childhood home...

And there wasn’t much space for nearly storing the accouterments necessary for a family of six to survive a Michigan winter...

Because there wasn’t really a specific place for specific things to go, the inevitable outcome was that everything went everywhere, the space was overrun with visual and physical clutter, and we frequently had difficult finding what we needed when we needed it.

We usually did our best to kick off shoes at the door, but beyond that it was anybody’s guess whether you’d be able to find the stuff you needed the next time you left the house.

A defined mudroom is great because it gives you a chance to slow down and assess what should be allowed enter into the house proper vs. what needs to be taken outside and shaken off.

It’s a space that allows you to decide whether you want all of what you’ve brought home to be allowed all the way into the home.

Does someone (perhaps you) need to be hosed off before they enter the sacred, safe, and consciously curated space in which you live?

Are there things that serve a useful function out there in the big, wide open, and often dirty world that don’t necessarily belong in the cozy cleanliness of your physical and emotional home base?

I like the mudroom because it’s conscious practicality honors the duality of life:

The clean and the dirty...

The outside and the inside...

The good and the bad...

And, in so doing, it joins them together in a way that prevents them from becoming mixed up with one another.

The mudroom says:

“Look, I know you love your home and I know you love the world beyond your home. I know you like to go out and I know you like to come back in. How about you use the space that is me to enjoy the best of both worlds, and what don’t you allow those two world to mix and mingle in this specially designed space so that you can keep them separate in the areas where keeping them separate is a good idea?”

Basically, the mudroom serves as a useful zone for analysis and conscious decision making.

It’s a zone in which all incoming house guests, be they people, animals, articles of clothing, etc. get vetted for worthiness of entry.

Upon analysis, some items are ready to enter as they are...

While others are granted provisional entry (“You can come in but your shoes can’t”)...

While others just don’t belong inside the home at all, however important or functional they may be in other contexts.

This utility and the flexibility and freedom that it provides is why one of the things I do when working with clients is to help them build their very own Mental Mudroom.

Your Mental Mudroom serves as an imaginary space in your mind in which things are evaluated and sanitized before being admitted into your emotional home.

This is the zone where all incoming information gets vetted for worthiness of entry.

It’s where you ask yourself whether something is worth letting in and, if so, if it needs to be dusted off or stripped down or washed first.

The only difference is that instead of boots and dogs and kids, your Mental Mudroom is for:

Comments...

Ideas...

News stories...

Tweets...

Articles...

Posts...

Conversations..

Emails...

Etc.

Are you giving this stuff a once (or twice) over before you let it into the sacred space that is your mental home?

Would you trust a four year old child you don’t know very well to accurately evaluate and honestly communicate to you whether or not their shoes are dirty?

If not, what makes you think you can trust all of the information and “noise” that’s floating around out there, desperately looking for a mind with an admission policy that’s lax enough to let it in?

Are you allowing dirty, nasty, unlovely ideas to traipse carelessly through the door and across the carpet and up the stairs and into your bed like they own the place...

Tracking all sorts of junk across your mental floors and grinding it into your emotional carpet?

If you find you can’t get your mind off of something while you’re trying to go to sleep, it might be because there are reminders of whatever it is all over every room of your mental home.

If you can relate to this, it might be a good idea to develop a mental practice of pausing and considering worthiness of entry before allowing certain thoughts to take up residence in your head and hearts space.

How does that Facebook comment smell?

If that comment were wearing shoes, would the soles be clean?

Ask yourself: Is this likely to fill my space with a pleasant odor...

Or a nasty, lingering stench?

You would carry a garbage bag full of rotting meat into your living room and set it on the couch next to you...

And I imagine you wouldn’t bring it to bed and tuck it in under the covers next to you, either.

If we wouldn’t be willing to allow these kinds of things to defile our physical environment...

Why is it so easy and so natural for us to allow them to contaminate and pollute the headspace that is our homes?

And how about that sinister idea being screamed repetitively from every news outlet you can find about those killer viruses that are lurking on all of the packages you ordered, that are incubating inside people who don’t even know they’re infected, and that are probably going to spread all across the world at any time?

Ask yourself:

“Is this likely to make me feel safe and comfortable in my mental home?”

“Is admitting this idea into my consciousness over and over again going to make me safer in reality?”

“Is thinking and worrying about this just a colossal waste of my time and energy?”

“Am I being scammed? Am I being conned?”

“Am I substituting prepackaged and sensationalized information for actual thinking?”

I’d like to invite you to raise your standards for who and what you’re willing to entertain in the mansion that is your mind.

I know how valuable your mind is...

And I know what a wonderful place it could be.

Pay attention to how that idea knocking at the entryway of your mental mansion is making you feel. 

If you’re feeling nervous, unsettled, or off about it...

It may not be wise to allow it in.

One of the things the hosts of my favorite true crime podcast say all the time is:

“Be weird, be rude, stay alive.”

What they mean is that if your gut is telling you that something isn’t right, don’t worry about what will happen or how you’ll look if you act on your intuition when you’re wrong...

Worry about what will happen if you ignore your intuition when it’s right.

Another quote that applies here happens to come from one my favorite people:



“If something is worth thinking about, it is worth finding a way of thinking about it that feels good to you.”

It’s not that you just cut yourself off from reality and refuse to engage with all things that feel bad at first glance…

It’s about deciding that you’re going to use your brain in ways that are smart...

And that you’re going to use your brain to feel good rather than allowing others to use it to make you feel bad...

It’s about telling yourself that, if you’re going to entertain a given line of thinking, it’s going to be in a constructive way that focuses on:

Solutions rather than problems… 

What feels good rather than what feels bad…

What brings peace rather than what brings anxiety…

What makes you feel empowered rather than what makes you feel helpless.

What helps you feel safe rather than what makes you feel unsafe.

You get the idea.

Regardless of where you are now...

This can become your new way of operating your mind. 

You can train yourself and develop a new set of “house rules” that allow you to allow in only that which is going to enrich the internal environment of your mental home. 

Please give this a try and do let me know how it goes!

And if you’d like my help with this inner renovation project set up a free 15 minute call to see if we are a good fit for working together.