The Beauty of a bootility

As our desire for multifunctional living becomes more of the ‘norm’, making room for a Bootility in your home is often at the top of many people’s wish list. A Bootility? Well, it’s a fairly sought-after feature nowadays; years ago it could have been called the Scullery, the Boot or Utility room. Effectively, it’s the smallest space between the back door and your kitchen, a separate place to house dirty boots (hence the name!), or perhaps wood for the fire, washboards, wet raincoats, hats and bags. It helped keep floors clean (not that you may have been the person to clean them in Edwardian days if you were lucky enough to have a proper Boot room!). However, it may well have always been a dumping ground, messy and untidy. 

Nowadays, that little space has been cleaned up, tidied and given a new name: it is often referred to as a ‘Bootility’, a cross between a Boot Room and a Utility, and yes, it really can house all of the above as well as washing machines and tumble dryers. Don’t have anywhere to put them in the kitchen? Think Bootility.

​Of course, not all homes are large enough to house a separate utility and boot room. However, with clever planning and artful design, even the smallest space can be utilised. It’s about creating organisational order in your home, a place to improve the quality of your life significantly, somewhere you can set aside space to keep the ‘mess’ of everyday life in check. Your Bootility will help you achieve all this and more.

​Floor to ceiling cupboards can hide your washing machines, cleaning fluids, ironing board, even freshly laundered bedding and towels. Storage for all that household chore ‘stuff’ – whether it’s mops, dustpans, brooms and buckets – if handled correctly, the Bootility will take all those outsized and often difficult-to-find-space-for items out of your kitchen leaving that space for what it was meant for! 

​The key features to consider
So what are the key features you need to think about when designing your Bootility?
A utility room doesn’t need to be vast (although clearly that’s the dream). At the very least, installing a stacked washing machine/drier cupboard and creating a place for bulky items like the vacuum cleaner and mop is a really practical place to start. If you want to go further, Rotpunkt has a shelving system of three ‘portholes’ into which you can divide your clothes, linen and sheets for easy cleaning. 

It doesn’t have to be in the traditional spot just off the kitchen either – if there’s a dead space in your home, like that odd angle under the stairs or perhaps an unused corner cupboard or old larder, utilise it. There’s even a trend for moving the laundry operation upstairs, which makes sense on a practical level. If you’ve a grand bathroom that can take a separate partitioned off room or just a washer/drier cupboard, that’s a great option given there’ll already be available plumbing and no need to take sheets, duvet covers and towels downstairs dirty and upstairs clean anymore! ​

Hiding in Plain Sight
German designer Rotpunkt has made it easier to introduce utility room furniture into an open-plan kitchen space with their new access door. This opens in reverse, thus embracing the possibilities of reconfiguring the ground floor. Their access door provides discreet entry through a continuous run of tall units that when used, reveals a hidden room which is self-contained from the rest of the kitchen living space.

And don’t just think about yourselves – think of your furry friend! For dog owners, a Bootility will open up fabulous possibilities – not just a space for very wet Wellington boots but wet, muddy paws can be dried in the Bootility, and leads hung up; shelves could store food and treats. 

There are so many opportunities offered to people with a busy lifestyle once your Bootility Room is up and running - food storage, dirty shoes, muddy boots, wet coats and dog, mops, buckets, washing machine, tumble dryer, ironing board... endless possibilities to bring some order to the everyday chaos of life whilst keeping the kitchen free for what it is meant for - being a kitchen!