It was bigger than a closet, but not much. Added on to Mama and Dad’s original two-room house when the kitchen and screened-in porch were built in the mid-1950s, this “little room,” as we all called it, was the forerunner of today’s muck room or utility room. Fancier houses had hall closets, hall trees, a side porch or entryway, but we had our little room.
In it you could find an assortment of useful items like work gloves, a hammer, some pliers, Mama’s washer and clothespin bag with wooden clothespins. There were also clippers for trimming the bridal wreath bush, a broom and mop, a metal dustpan and the metal pants stretchers Mama used on Dad’s painter’s pants to keep them wrinkle-free and with a sharp crease.
Around two walls of the room, the high shelves held numerous quart jars, some with nails, screws, bolts and nuts, some newspaper-wrapped with Mama’s overflow of summer dill pickles and some canned veggies our neighbors had given us. There was usually a calf bottle or two, Mama’s extra wicks and lamp oil in case the power went out and a row of mud boots on the floor near the door.
This is also where Dad kept his “foul weather gear,” as he called it – a fleece-lined bomber cap and coat and his insulated coveralls and gloves. We had no fancy hangers for those items. A simple 16-penny nail worked just fine.
If one of us was looking for something around the house, Mama’s first question was always “Did you look in the little room?” It was a repository for all things necessary and otherwise. It held the stuff that helped keep our household on track.
I wanted to include a picture with this column, but after searching through family albums and several boxes, not one photo surfaced. (I did find this one, showing the outside window.) Isn’t that just like the “little things” in our lives? We take them for granted, not really noticing them, but when they aren’t there anymore or we want to revisit them, they are out of our reach. There are some things that are so much a part of our daily routines that they become invisible, their day-to-day usefulness a given.
As I thought about our little room and how much we depended on it, I couldn’t help but think of those affected by Hurricane Helene and now the California wildfires. So many of them are cut off from all that is familiar, their lives upended by disaster. Many of them would probably give anything to have their own familiar place to go to, to depend on for a comforting routine.
I don’t think I will ever think of our little room the same way again, because now I see it really was a very important room, even if it didn’t seem so at the time.
If you have one of these rooms, go take a look – really see what is there. Your life is made up of these seemingly insignificant things. Then, thank the Good Lord for that space and everything in it. There are so many right now who are unable to enjoy something so simple.
Be grateful. Be mindful. Take a picture … you may wish you had one day.
Spiced Punch
Comfort in a cup. My mother-in-law always had a percolator plugged in on the sideboard in her kitchen during the cold weather months. It was usually filled with this wonderful concoction. Great for sipping while you’re reminiscing.
For an 8-cup percolator:
2 ½ cups pineapple juice
1 ¾ cups water
2 cups cranberry juice
Mix and add to percolator. Then put the following in the basket and put in percolator:
1 tablespoon whole cloves
½ tablespoon whole allspice
3 sticks cinnamon, broken in pieces
1 pinch salt
½ cup light brown sugar
Perk 10 minutes. Remove basket and serve hot. You can use whole cinnamon sticks as stirrers.
