Six months after moving into the house, I finally put mezuzahs on most of the doors (I put a mezuzah by the front door when I moved in). Mezuzahs are small cases holding a scroll of parchment with Torah verses. The custom is to place them on the right side of doorways heading into a room.
Mezuzot on the doors are supposed to remind you of the presence of God and the commandments. Which sounds like it might be grim, but it isn’t, it’s joyful. For example, in each room, I tried to think about the different good things I would get to do in the rooms — hospitality in the front room, cooking tasty food for guests and healthy food for me in the kitchen, study and reading in the library, enjoying the garden on the deck.
The house has a LOT of doors. The entry way has an outside door and door to the enclosed porch. The kitchen opens onto the dining room and sitting room. The library opens onto the front room and the hall. The bedroom opens onto the hall and the deck. I have never needed this number of mezuzahs before.
My parents very generously gave me a set of large, beautiful, expensive scrolls, along with a set of trasparent lucite holders with the world’s worst industrial design. The bottom of the holders has a plastic plug that screws in, to keep the scroll clean and dry.
The plug has holes drilled through it that are supposed to align with holes in the case when you rotate it to the right orientation. But the plug is not perforated all the way through. You need to bang a nail through 1/4″ of hard plastic, while trying to keep the plug from sliding along the screw treads and misaligning the holes. Or try to drill through the plastic (same problems). Or simply unscrew the plug, put the nail through the holes in the case, and think about spiders nesting in your mezuzah cases.
The mezuzah case I had put at the front door when I moved in was one that my friend Joan had given me. It was wood that she had carved herself. She had said that it was not protected, and shouldn’t be used outdoors, but it was the only one that I thought I had (I actually found another one today), so I put it up temporarily when I moved in. Now it is discolored, and sitting in a closet shelf. Sorry Joan.