Agreed, only door to door sales and Jehovah's use the front. Honestly if you even knock and wait for me to get to the back door to open it, you probably shouldn't even be at my house.
Is that why our house was built backwards? Yes, literally, the front of our house faces away from the road. So people would actually use the front door? The front of our house is interesting and pretty (in my eyes) but coming up the driveway all you see is the plain ugly backside.
Or all those people knew the precious owners and that was their preferred entrance so it's habbit. That said. Yeah I'd say at least 90% of the people I know/houses I've lived in the "front" door is not the primary entrance to the home I think most people's driveways run to the side of the house so that's the door that's used rather than walking around the corner to the front
In the house I grew up in our "front door" didn't even have stairs to it. You could use it but it was a 4 foot drop or scramble up.
Practically speaking a lot of back or side doors have mud rooms or places you could remove and leave or at least clean off your shoes before entering(Vermont is very rural and was/is very agriculturally oriented), where as a lot of front doors go straight into a room. It is sort of a traditional not to use the front door, not even mentioning some of the superstition about front doors that may or may not have influenced the formation of such a tradition.
The one I can remember clearly was from one of my favorite authors Terry Pratchett(a lot of his story elements are based on historical or cultural references, though I have never run this one down.)
“There were only three times in your life when it was proper to come through the front door, and you were carried every time.” {I believe this means, birth, marriage, and death.}
― Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters
I have vague recollections of others but couldn't point to one specifically.
I assumed it had something to do with PA Dutch. Did a little googling and ended up on Facebook.
https://www.facebook.com/share/v/iZygggT122Gnh8Ag/?mibextid=SphRi8
Found this article as well:
http://www.lovettsvillehistoricalsociety.org/index.php/the-german-american-zweiturhaus/#:~:text=He%20traces%20the%20two%2Ddoor,portion%20of%20these%20large%20houses.
So, it clearly comes from Germany.
I'm a currier in Vermont, someone called in a complaint because I didn't deliver to the side door when the delivery instructions said deliver to the FRONT DOOR. Then she doubled-down stating "everybody calls it the front door." 🙄
I never thought of this until your post, but my front door is strictly ornamental, *and I can't even think of a friend or neighbor--like, at all--who uses the front door as the primary entryway.*
Yes. The back door is also usually adjacent to your "dooryard" if you don't know that one yet. The dooryard is where people drive in to try to rouse you and adjacent to the door you use. Hence if they're dropping in unannounced to tell you about the bear they saw in your yard, or drop off some extra berries they picked, or see if you're going to Town Meeting they might be successful by not disturbing you inside your home and with luck meet you/drop it off at the door to you. That's how it works here. 🤷🏼♀️ 🤷♂️
This was my first reaction too but he's saying his front door is the one in the dooryard... so this seems a bit odd.
OP maybe you could make a "decoy" front door (you know, formal entrance looking thing) so people use the "real" one in your dooryard!
Vermont is friendly and most people are welcomed in so using a back or side door, especially if there is a good walking space just makes sense. Growing up here we didn’t lock our doors and often told mail people or people in town to let themselves in if needed. One time the guy to fix phone line did all the work he needed when no one was home, cleaned up the place a little cuz he stepped inside with boots, and left a note that he swept up around the rest of the area cuz he was cleaning his mess anyways. He didn’t put a bill but instead my parents had him over for dinner and paid him a different night. Times have changed and so has Vermont but using back or side door was for everyone who you knew even remotely. Front door was generally for people soliciting or asking for votes or something. Most of my friends had things that partially blocked the front door because they would use the front door landing area to stash things or hang jackets. They would just holler out the window “use the side door” to anyone who showed up. Very common because of how friendly people were. Inviting mail people or delivery into your home via side door and giving them glass of water or whatever was just part of normal life.
Saying that front is common as well for some people, but rural areas usually don’t use front door for most things. My guess is the people who owned before you were friendly like my family was growing up, and people got used to it.
Very normal, growing up if someone went to the door to My Home that faced the street versus the driveway, sometimes I wouldn’t have been able to get to that door.
Most front doors lead directly into the house, generally a living room. Back doors, side doors, and garage doors tend to lead in some sort of "mud room" area.
Yeah, do you want every quotidian tomdicknharry trampin over your pretty parlor rug to do ordinary business? Naaah. Back or side door=business door. Front door is curb appeal door.
Growing up we always knew someone was a stranger if they went to the front door and rang the doorbell instead of using the garage door. A primitive form of screening calls but in person. Welcome to VT!
Back door is usually connect to the house by the mudroom so it becomes the de facto front door. The front door is usually just for hanging wreaths or handing out candy on Halloween
99% come to my front door. I have pretty tight side yards. If you come around back and you’re not known there could be trouble. Had a politicians come once around back because I was trimming trees and I told him I would listen to whatever he has to say if he dragged branches. He left. Had some bible beaters come around back, I knew who they were because they were stalking my neighborhood that week . Dig took care of them
I don't know a single person who uses their front door to tell you the truth. They're just for decoration. Mine, on the inside, has a couch in front of it. When I go to anyone's house even for the first time I also always go to the side or back door.
I wonder if this is a Vermont thing, a country thing, or just a "I live in a climate where mudrooms are essential" thing?
Definitely a more rural thing. I’m from CT and grew up in an old farm house. Same deal. Our front door was so unnecessary that it’s a wall now. It’s a remnant from a time when you had a “working” part of your home and a section where you greeted guests.
As a kid growing up in Vermont nobody ever used the front door. It went into the living room which was the nicest room in the house. You always went through the garage or side door. Back in those days nobody took their shoes off entering the home. Just your winter boats and snow jackets and pants. Mothers wouldn’t allow their kids to use the front door. Carried over for generations
Most Vermont homes have a mud room on the side entrance. Most Vermont jobs historically are labor jobs that require a room to take off work clothes as to not track it in. You’ll see often these homes have the washer and dryer in that room or right after for this reason.
If you go to the front doors at my dad's house, then you didn't know anyone in the house! The back door was the primary entrance.
Same at my house. We even put a sign on the front door, all deliveries to the side door!
Lived in the bottom floor of a house with the driveway next to a door, while the front door was behind a screened-in porch.
Did the back every time just bc it’s quicker.
I swear I thought this was about the many other “things” people rant about in this and the burly sub, but feels nice to have something casual like this for once!
This depends on the house and layout. We always use our front door and rarely use the back. We put Ring cameras on both just for visibility but we can go days without going in or out the back door.
Lifelong Vermonter. Family has been here since before statehood was achieved. Live in my grandparents' former house. Haven't opened my front door in probably 3 years. Side door gets all the traffic and has for generations.
Life long Vermonter (since 1958) Front doors open into a formal space in the house. Ours, a 1920's farmhouse, so that's between the dining room and parlor. The side door opens into the mudroom where friends, family and neighbors enter and our back door where the kids and grandkids go out to the swing set, lawn chairs and grill. Folks that give you pleasure uses the side or back door, folks that take pleasure away are at your front door.
I'm sure it's a previous owner thing. Lock the gate, put up a sign saying "Use Front Door" and retrain them. If needed, sternly say "NO!" when they go to the back door and close it without letting them in. Worst case, get an electric fencer, hook it up to the gate latch, and keep a box of cookies by the front door to punish the poor choice and reward them for doing it right (this may only work with dogs and bears, but I'm trying to help).
Unfortunately these are now being made. https://www.etsy.com/listing/1237772084/back-door-guests-are-best-doormat?gpla=1&gao=1&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=shopping_us_ps-d-home_and_living-floor_and_rugs-other&utm_custom1=_k_EAIaIQobChMIm__frt38hgMV40pHAR117wxLEAQYASABEgKmDPD_BwE_k_&utm_content=go_12566097808_121162422362_507253854193_pla-306076053075_m__1237772084_5293811026&utm_custom2=12566097808&gad_source=1&gbraid=0AAAAADtcfRIOayrwVaxOTnIXrfYbT_Rp9
I only have a front and a gararge door. If the gararge is open that’s what I use. I had a house where the front door had no walkway. WHY THE DOOR? Crossbreeze required.
Our front door/entrance is now blocked by my desk 😂
(Don't worry we still have multiple other exits). But we never use the front door. I think it's fairly common.
*Our front door has an*
*Insulated panel screwed*
*Over top of it*
\- missoularat
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I would love to trade with you. Delivery people will trudge through three feet of snow up my completely untouched, snowy steps to the front door I don’t use rather than walk down the nice shoveled and sanded path to the garage door. Which is both closest to where they park and safer to get to. It’s weird.
Same here. We have the front walk blocked off with a sign and orange cones (the walk has been frost-heaved and needs replacing), and people still walk around through the side yard and up a slope to get to the front door. We put “please deliver to SIDE DOOR””, thank you!” on delivery requests, and still more than half of them still insist on delivering to the front door. Drives us crazy. 🤯
Mud room? There's a lot of mud and leaves in Vermont. I think it's an act of courtesy shown by delivery people, who live there and know how much debris one can track into a home.
You know, I was thinking about it, and at first I thought "everyone uses the side door!" but there is a difference between a *side* door and the *back* door. The correct door to use is the one closest to the driveway (visible), in my opinion. Growing up, my parents' house generally had 2 doors, a hidden one in the back that goes into the garage, to be used if we're covered in snow, or the front door. The garage was always chock full of stuff and, after you de-snow in "the hot room" (the fireplace to heat the house was in there) you need to go through basically the whole house to get back to the living room/kitchen. Not ideal for bringing in groceries. Now that the house has a deck in the back, we use that. It leads right into the dining room. The front door is now blocked by my dad's chair.
I think, when I was briefly learning about architecture in high school, they call it a "service entrance"? I mean part of the idea was from back in servant-times when staff needed to get to staff-relevant places like the kitchen quicker, but the idea stayed because a door close to the kitchen is just good to have. Not every house has a mudroom, which to be honest, is fucked up. Mudrooms are so useful.
I moved away from Vermont a couple decades ago, but lived there for the first 25 years of my life. I never thought about this before, but you are absolutely right... My family always used the back door, as did most of my friends and acquaintances in their homes.
Completely the opposite in my current world (deep south).
Now that you mention it, yeah. Back door is friendly and welcoming. Front door is stiff and boring. I always used the back door even when I lived in an apartment. It was designed that way!
I live in Burlington where the houses are closer together and so we do use our front door as do many of our neighbors. But not all. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve stood outside a house here figuring out which one to use - just happened the other day. There’s a whole mental assessment.
Hard to say without pics, but there is maybe something about your setup that leads people out back. In general though, front entrances of houses are decoration only, with mailbox at the end of a driveway and entry through a side door or garage.
Far northern NEK here. My house did not come with keys. We never lock the doors and if I ever had to, I’d have to change the locks. We often sleep with doors open on hot nights.
Even fuel delivery tickets come to the side door which is up the driveway and gated (for dogs).
The front porch has a dog gate but USPS tends to deliver parcels there and the others leave them against the garage by the back gate.
We use our front door to access the front porch and for the kids’ school bus when there’s no snow.
Also there’s a vestibule at the front for shoes and coats.
The previous owner turned the back into a second mud room which takes space away from the kitchen, but is useful because that’s where we enter from the driveway.
(Note, I’m not from Vermont but have lived north, south, and across the pond.)
Front door is decoration only. Back door or garage.
gararge\*
There's a warsher machine in the gararge
Next to the torlet.
The what now? Is that next to the urinus?
In here, you're peeing.
I’ve heard so many call it a tolit
I bought myself a new porsh mower. Yea it's a 12 cyclinder.
Dad?
Perfect comment
That is beautiful!
The gararge acrost the driveway?
The acrost kills me! Haha
Jesus fucking Christ I did an actual spit take
Agreed, only door to door sales and Jehovah's use the front. Honestly if you even knock and wait for me to get to the back door to open it, you probably shouldn't even be at my house.
Word!
yo it's not just for decoration, that's the Christmas tree door.
back/SIDE door OR garage
Perfect! I'm friggin choking on my coffee...
Is that why our house was built backwards? Yes, literally, the front of our house faces away from the road. So people would actually use the front door? The front of our house is interesting and pretty (in my eyes) but coming up the driveway all you see is the plain ugly backside.
What? Untrue noooooo
I’m not sure the last time I used my own front door tbh
just permanently locked.
Couch blocking it.
Same.
Or unlocked, I couldn't find my key if you paid me.
My house didn’t come with a front door key. Had to get a locksmith to fix that situation
The 1 or 2 times a year we try to use it, it's usually stuck!
Or all those people knew the precious owners and that was their preferred entrance so it's habbit. That said. Yeah I'd say at least 90% of the people I know/houses I've lived in the "front" door is not the primary entrance to the home I think most people's driveways run to the side of the house so that's the door that's used rather than walking around the corner to the front
Front mudroom door for us. The main house door is very rarely used. Landscaping helps a ton in passively directing people where you want them to go.
Yes. This. We have a front door. We never use it
this is most logical. we have a front and a side, and we're shocked when someone rings the front doorbell.
In the house I grew up in our "front door" didn't even have stairs to it. You could use it but it was a 4 foot drop or scramble up. Practically speaking a lot of back or side doors have mud rooms or places you could remove and leave or at least clean off your shoes before entering(Vermont is very rural and was/is very agriculturally oriented), where as a lot of front doors go straight into a room. It is sort of a traditional not to use the front door, not even mentioning some of the superstition about front doors that may or may not have influenced the formation of such a tradition.
Oooo what superstitions?
The one I can remember clearly was from one of my favorite authors Terry Pratchett(a lot of his story elements are based on historical or cultural references, though I have never run this one down.) “There were only three times in your life when it was proper to come through the front door, and you were carried every time.” {I believe this means, birth, marriage, and death.} ― Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters I have vague recollections of others but couldn't point to one specifically.
Here in central PA, a lot of older houses have two front doors, side by side. One is used as described above, though I have only seen it used
Fascinating. Do you have any sense of what culture, region, or country of origin this tradition might have come from?
I assumed it had something to do with PA Dutch. Did a little googling and ended up on Facebook. https://www.facebook.com/share/v/iZygggT122Gnh8Ag/?mibextid=SphRi8 Found this article as well: http://www.lovettsvillehistoricalsociety.org/index.php/the-german-american-zweiturhaus/#:~:text=He%20traces%20the%20two%2Ddoor,portion%20of%20these%20large%20houses. So, it clearly comes from Germany.
Good point abt the mudrooms I have seen them in newer houses. My house is from the 1800s tiny farmhouse, doesn’t have a mud room.
I'm a currier in Vermont, someone called in a complaint because I didn't deliver to the side door when the delivery instructions said deliver to the FRONT DOOR. Then she doubled-down stating "everybody calls it the front door." 🙄
You poor sensible soul
A currier or a courier?
Maybe they deliver curry.
Or brush horses
Have you yet to realize your errors of your ways?
Habit from mud and snow season. The side/back door usually has a larger mud room area. Front doors are for trick-or-treating exclusively 🙃
***THIS!!***
for farmers it's a place to kick off shitty barn boots, and hang your coat and hat...
I never thought of this until your post, but my front door is strictly ornamental, *and I can't even think of a friend or neighbor--like, at all--who uses the front door as the primary entryway.*
Yes, many front doors are ornamental. We really mess people up as our house only has side doors. It looks like we have no door from the front 😁
This sounds ideal
My house doesn't have a front door, just one side door.
Yes. The back door is also usually adjacent to your "dooryard" if you don't know that one yet. The dooryard is where people drive in to try to rouse you and adjacent to the door you use. Hence if they're dropping in unannounced to tell you about the bear they saw in your yard, or drop off some extra berries they picked, or see if you're going to Town Meeting they might be successful by not disturbing you inside your home and with luck meet you/drop it off at the door to you. That's how it works here. 🤷🏼♀️ 🤷♂️
This was my first reaction too but he's saying his front door is the one in the dooryard... so this seems a bit odd. OP maybe you could make a "decoy" front door (you know, formal entrance looking thing) so people use the "real" one in your dooryard!
Front doors are decorative in VT.
Vermont is friendly and most people are welcomed in so using a back or side door, especially if there is a good walking space just makes sense. Growing up here we didn’t lock our doors and often told mail people or people in town to let themselves in if needed. One time the guy to fix phone line did all the work he needed when no one was home, cleaned up the place a little cuz he stepped inside with boots, and left a note that he swept up around the rest of the area cuz he was cleaning his mess anyways. He didn’t put a bill but instead my parents had him over for dinner and paid him a different night. Times have changed and so has Vermont but using back or side door was for everyone who you knew even remotely. Front door was generally for people soliciting or asking for votes or something. Most of my friends had things that partially blocked the front door because they would use the front door landing area to stash things or hang jackets. They would just holler out the window “use the side door” to anyone who showed up. Very common because of how friendly people were. Inviting mail people or delivery into your home via side door and giving them glass of water or whatever was just part of normal life. Saying that front is common as well for some people, but rural areas usually don’t use front door for most things. My guess is the people who owned before you were friendly like my family was growing up, and people got used to it.
"There were only three times in your life when it was proper to come through the front door, and you were carried every time."
Damn, just posted that quote before seeing yours. Seems like we have an author in common.
Who is the author?
Someone commented in another place that this was Terry Pratchet
Very normal, growing up if someone went to the door to My Home that faced the street versus the driveway, sometimes I wouldn’t have been able to get to that door.
Most front doors lead directly into the house, generally a living room. Back doors, side doors, and garage doors tend to lead in some sort of "mud room" area.
I respect my houses right to claim that it’s “front door” is a back door…🤷♂️
Our front door goes right to the mudroom, as god intended.
Yeah, do you want every quotidian tomdicknharry trampin over your pretty parlor rug to do ordinary business? Naaah. Back or side door=business door. Front door is curb appeal door.
My front door doesn’t even have steps up to it and if you *did* somehow open it, there’s a couch blocking it. 😆
If someone came to my front door I'd be very confused. Use the side door like a normal person.
I just don't answer either door. LOL.
👑
I’m cool with back door for friends and family. Officials, deliveries and service, that’s just trespassing
Growing up we always knew someone was a stranger if they went to the front door and rang the doorbell instead of using the garage door. A primitive form of screening calls but in person. Welcome to VT!
Back door is usually connect to the house by the mudroom so it becomes the de facto front door. The front door is usually just for hanging wreaths or handing out candy on Halloween
99% come to my front door. I have pretty tight side yards. If you come around back and you’re not known there could be trouble. Had a politicians come once around back because I was trimming trees and I told him I would listen to whatever he has to say if he dragged branches. He left. Had some bible beaters come around back, I knew who they were because they were stalking my neighborhood that week . Dig took care of them
I don't know a single person who uses their front door to tell you the truth. They're just for decoration. Mine, on the inside, has a couch in front of it. When I go to anyone's house even for the first time I also always go to the side or back door. I wonder if this is a Vermont thing, a country thing, or just a "I live in a climate where mudrooms are essential" thing?
Definitely a more rural thing. I’m from CT and grew up in an old farm house. Same deal. Our front door was so unnecessary that it’s a wall now. It’s a remnant from a time when you had a “working” part of your home and a section where you greeted guests.
Same in the South (where I now live). So, not just places with mudrooms.
Growing up in California I always thought this was just an east coast thing. Literally no one I know from PA to VT uses their front door. 😂
My house built in the 1940’s has an original front door that we don’t have the key for
As a kid growing up in Vermont nobody ever used the front door. It went into the living room which was the nicest room in the house. You always went through the garage or side door. Back in those days nobody took their shoes off entering the home. Just your winter boats and snow jackets and pants. Mothers wouldn’t allow their kids to use the front door. Carried over for generations
Most Vermont homes have a mud room on the side entrance. Most Vermont jobs historically are labor jobs that require a room to take off work clothes as to not track it in. You’ll see often these homes have the washer and dryer in that room or right after for this reason.
The prior owner asked everyone to use the back door. They’ve all been trained years ago.
If you go to the front doors at my dad's house, then you didn't know anyone in the house! The back door was the primary entrance. Same at my house. We even put a sign on the front door, all deliveries to the side door!
Lived in the bottom floor of a house with the driveway next to a door, while the front door was behind a screened-in porch. Did the back every time just bc it’s quicker.
I swear I thought this was about the many other “things” people rant about in this and the burly sub, but feels nice to have something casual like this for once!
This depends on the house and layout. We always use our front door and rarely use the back. We put Ring cameras on both just for visibility but we can go days without going in or out the back door.
Lifelong Vermonter. Family has been here since before statehood was achieved. Live in my grandparents' former house. Haven't opened my front door in probably 3 years. Side door gets all the traffic and has for generations.
Yes normal. No one uses the front door.
As Jim Morrison of the doors says, I’m your back door man
Sounds like you should mow your meadow
Life long Vermonter (since 1958) Front doors open into a formal space in the house. Ours, a 1920's farmhouse, so that's between the dining room and parlor. The side door opens into the mudroom where friends, family and neighbors enter and our back door where the kids and grandkids go out to the swing set, lawn chairs and grill. Folks that give you pleasure uses the side or back door, folks that take pleasure away are at your front door.
Just the police and vampires come to the front door, and they both need to be invited across the threshold (unless they have a warrant).
I'm sure it's a previous owner thing. Lock the gate, put up a sign saying "Use Front Door" and retrain them. If needed, sternly say "NO!" when they go to the back door and close it without letting them in. Worst case, get an electric fencer, hook it up to the gate latch, and keep a box of cookies by the front door to punish the poor choice and reward them for doing it right (this may only work with dogs and bears, but I'm trying to help).
Lifelong new englander, I think it’s a rural New England thing!
You want people to come to your front door? And like, knock on it? That's cause for alarm in our house unless it's Halloween.
We are in mass, but yes, front door is ornamental only 🤣
Perhaps the front door doesn't appear accessable to visitors?
That’s what I thought at first but I made a nice little path to it direct shot from where you pull in, it has a little porch too
Unfortunately these are now being made. https://www.etsy.com/listing/1237772084/back-door-guests-are-best-doormat?gpla=1&gao=1&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=shopping_us_ps-d-home_and_living-floor_and_rugs-other&utm_custom1=_k_EAIaIQobChMIm__frt38hgMV40pHAR117wxLEAQYASABEgKmDPD_BwE_k_&utm_content=go_12566097808_121162422362_507253854193_pla-306076053075_m__1237772084_5293811026&utm_custom2=12566097808&gad_source=1&gbraid=0AAAAADtcfRIOayrwVaxOTnIXrfYbT_Rp9
Front door is to fancy folk just use the back
Only the cops come to the front door
side door by garage, can confirm front is for decoration only
I only have a front and a gararge door. If the gararge is open that’s what I use. I had a house where the front door had no walkway. WHY THE DOOR? Crossbreeze required.
Our front door/entrance is now blocked by my desk 😂 (Don't worry we still have multiple other exits). But we never use the front door. I think it's fairly common.
Everyone uses our back door. I prefer it as it’d harder for our dogs to run out into the road. Plus our mud room is there.
What is a driveway? Is that a door yard?
It’s the door yard
Your door yard is sacred ground.
Not the front door but definitely the side door by the garage.
Our front door has an insulated panel screwed over top of it
*Our front door has an* *Insulated panel screwed* *Over top of it* \- missoularat --- ^(I detect haikus. And sometimes, successfully.) ^[Learn more about me.](https://www.reddit.com/r/haikusbot/) ^(Opt out of replies: "haikusbot opt out" | Delete my comment: "haikusbot delete")
Social visits are the door that you use. Business visits are the front door.
Mister Potato Head! Mister Potato Head! Back doors are not secrets!
I literally have never used my front door to go inside and outside of my house. Only time I open it is to get some fresh air in the house.
We use to call the front door “the jehovah’s witness door” because they were literally the only ones who would use it.
No. No one goes to my back door. No delivery person, no neighbor…. I live in southwestern Vt tho.
I would love to trade with you. Delivery people will trudge through three feet of snow up my completely untouched, snowy steps to the front door I don’t use rather than walk down the nice shoveled and sanded path to the garage door. Which is both closest to where they park and safer to get to. It’s weird.
Same here. We have the front walk blocked off with a sign and orange cones (the walk has been frost-heaved and needs replacing), and people still walk around through the side yard and up a slope to get to the front door. We put “please deliver to SIDE DOOR””, thank you!” on delivery requests, and still more than half of them still insist on delivering to the front door. Drives us crazy. 🤯
We don’t get visitors but no one has ever came to our back door.
no steps to the front door...
Don’t you dare come to my front door.
Mud room? There's a lot of mud and leaves in Vermont. I think it's an act of courtesy shown by delivery people, who live there and know how much debris one can track into a home.
You know, I was thinking about it, and at first I thought "everyone uses the side door!" but there is a difference between a *side* door and the *back* door. The correct door to use is the one closest to the driveway (visible), in my opinion. Growing up, my parents' house generally had 2 doors, a hidden one in the back that goes into the garage, to be used if we're covered in snow, or the front door. The garage was always chock full of stuff and, after you de-snow in "the hot room" (the fireplace to heat the house was in there) you need to go through basically the whole house to get back to the living room/kitchen. Not ideal for bringing in groceries. Now that the house has a deck in the back, we use that. It leads right into the dining room. The front door is now blocked by my dad's chair. I think, when I was briefly learning about architecture in high school, they call it a "service entrance"? I mean part of the idea was from back in servant-times when staff needed to get to staff-relevant places like the kitchen quicker, but the idea stayed because a door close to the kitchen is just good to have. Not every house has a mudroom, which to be honest, is fucked up. Mudrooms are so useful.
I moved away from Vermont a couple decades ago, but lived there for the first 25 years of my life. I never thought about this before, but you are absolutely right... My family always used the back door, as did most of my friends and acquaintances in their homes. Completely the opposite in my current world (deep south).
It’s not Halloween?
Bruh I felt the same when I moved here. Then I worked for ups and had to find the damn doors and apartments with 1/2 numbers
Now that you mention it, yeah. Back door is friendly and welcoming. Front door is stiff and boring. I always used the back door even when I lived in an apartment. It was designed that way!
What about dooryard?
I live in Burlington where the houses are closer together and so we do use our front door as do many of our neighbors. But not all. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve stood outside a house here figuring out which one to use - just happened the other day. There’s a whole mental assessment.
Hard to say without pics, but there is maybe something about your setup that leads people out back. In general though, front entrances of houses are decoration only, with mailbox at the end of a driveway and entry through a side door or garage.
Do you really mean "back" door or do you mean carport door?
Far northern NEK here. My house did not come with keys. We never lock the doors and if I ever had to, I’d have to change the locks. We often sleep with doors open on hot nights. Even fuel delivery tickets come to the side door which is up the driveway and gated (for dogs). The front porch has a dog gate but USPS tends to deliver parcels there and the others leave them against the garage by the back gate. We use our front door to access the front porch and for the kids’ school bus when there’s no snow. Also there’s a vestibule at the front for shoes and coats. The previous owner turned the back into a second mud room which takes space away from the kitchen, but is useful because that’s where we enter from the driveway. (Note, I’m not from Vermont but have lived north, south, and across the pond.)
I love going in the back door
[удалено]
Front door leads to the parlor. When the minister comes for tea, he might use that one. Everyone else uses the kitchen / mudroom door.
No baby making threw the backdoor.