At 8:25 on a wet Tuesday, our hallway smells of wet dog, and we don't have a dog. It is the smell of four coats, three pairs of wellies and a football boot that has not been washed since Saturday, all steaming gently in a space about the width of a pushchair. It is 1930s Headingley at its most atmospheric, and we have until 8:32 to get out through it.
The hallway is long and narrow, with the stairs up one side and a radiator under them that has not been on since April. There's a newel post at the bottom that was designed for nothing in particular, and for six months of the year it carries more wet coat than a cloakroom. I've had nine autumns in this house to work out how to live with it, and this is the version I'm running this year.
Four coats, two pairs of boots
The coats are mine, Rob's everyday one, Isla's (from the Next sale rail last October, £22) and Alfie's (Vinted, £12, with a £2.50 hat that has outlasted three owners). Rob's work waterproofs, which he wears six hours a day, live on a hook by the back door and not in the hallway, or there would be no room for the rest of us.
The boots are Alfie's, which are the football boots we bought in September (£22), and Rob's five-a-side pair from Wednesday nights. Add Alfie's wellies, Isla's wellies, Isla's netball trainers and everyone's school shoes, and there are thirteen pairs of footwear between the front door and the kitchen. I counted them on Sunday and then wished I hadn't.
What goes where
Rob put up a row of four hooks at kid height in 2022, and a fifth went up in September for Alfie's Beavers bag. Coats hang on the hooks, never on the newel post if I can stop it, and anything properly wet goes over the back of a kitchen chair for the first hour, where the air can get at it. The heating isn't on yet, so there's no radiator to lean on, and the kitchen is only a degree or two warmer than the hall, but moving air does more than I expected.
A soaked coat that won't dry by morning goes on the heated airer in the dining end of the through-lounge, hung on its own hanger, for three hours. That costs about 22p. It is not what the airer was bought for, and it's the cheapest way I know of getting a coat from wet to wearable. Hats and gloves live in a basket on the stairs, so there's no hunting on a school morning.
The boots are the part that took me longest. Football boots get knocked together on the back step on Saturday, brushed with an old nail brush that now belongs to them, and stuffed with newspaper from the free local paper that comes through the door. The paper pulls the wet out overnight and I change it once. Wellies go upside down on the boot tray by the front door, which is a £4 plastic tray from the pound shop that holds roughly one centimetre of muddy water per week.
The Saturday wash picks up the rest. Alfie's football kit goes on the Cotton 40 with the PE kit and the swimming bag, with a scoop of bio powder, because mud doesn't shift from white socks on the Eco programme. The washable doormat (£9) goes in with the same load once a fortnight and comes out looking like a different mat.
What didn't work
An over-the-door coat rack for £8.50, which promised to fit in the little cupboard under the stairs and pulled the door out of true so that it now catches on the frame. Rob had to plane the door, which cost us a Sunday afternoon and a very bad word from Alfie. A saucer of bicarbonate of soda on the stairs, which I'm not sure does anything but which makes me feel better. And a boot dryer for £13.99 that I returned, because the one time I tried it, it made the whole hallway smell like hot rubber.
I've stopped trying to beat the smell and just try to keep it from getting a hold. The windows in the hallway stay slightly open on dry afternoons, the front door gets an open-and-shut as soon as the school run is done, and the dehumidifier goes on at the foot of the stairs this week, a few days earlier than usual.
On Saturday, I'm adding a second row of hooks higher up for the hats, and Rob has agreed to do it on his next day off. Mabel, who has no role in any of this, sits on the bottom stair with her back to the lot of it and her tail wrapped neatly round her feet.
