Later on in the book she says how she leaves her shoes in the hall, to go into the shoe cupboard next day. I think that means - outside the door of her apartment in the hall. The shoe cupboard in just inside the front door, and that is where she keeps her 'otd in today's purse/handbag' things.
Kathryn - It makes perfect sense to keep things needed only outdoors in a closet near the door, and I'd be wanting everything bone dry and clean before I put them away too.
I think you need to make it fit the place you live in. Those who need a mud room, usually really need a mud room.
I do think she is writing about a completely different style of living. Minimal space and rooms.
All of your personal possessions in the bedroom is her suggestion (well except for shoes perhaps
- when you live alone, there is a tendency to spread out.
I rather like having another hairbrush and nail scissors in a drawer near the back door. My nails are forever breaking and that is handy, and especially in winter, I love to brush my hair in the winter sun, without needing to return the brush to either my bedroom or bathroom, where there are multiples of brushes and even more combs of all styles gathered in the bathroom cupboard. I can see a category of brushes in my future, but refuse to jump ahead to it just yet, or even commit to an aim of just 1. (There is another hair brush in my glove box, left there after I went away and forgot to take a brush)
I'm trying to be open to a different way of doing things, and a different result.
Towards the end of her book she does write about why she wrote it - to help others with huge anxiety on 'tidiness' as she had. To tell how she overcame her own dilemma, and went on to find others helped by that method.
I think the rambling way organisational books are often written is 'interesting'. I don't think MK has that all on her own.