A richer understanding of the mundane
Under the tag "mundane detail" I write entries that delve deeper into mundane areas, which normally are not the focus of the PCs interest, but help to make the world more believable. Because such mundane detail existed in the real world's middle ages, often these are articles reflect how things were done in the real world medieval period, to then adapt and use them for the game.
How to avoid the need for mundane detail
A better solution than describing mundane rooms in detail in any given adventure is to have a list of things that helps the GM to come up with different, specific descriptions for such rooms in the moment. Gary Gygax did realize that when he created Appendix I: Dungeon Dressing, which provided exactly such lists: items, sounds and features that could be found in "empty" dungeon rooms, and more specifically, rooms such as chapels, laboratories, libraries, living quarters and torture chambers. Most of these lists even made it unchanged to Appendix A of 5e.
Even though he provided numbers for each item, to allow random picks, his advise for each of these tables was to "Select from the above list. Use random determination only to round out or fill in.", or a variation of this wording. Their purpose is to provide a fuse for the DM's imagination.
For these lists to be useful, they need to be densely written and quickly looked up -- ideally they fit on a DM screen pane, if you use a DM screen. I think the ability to post such quick look-up aids to jog imagination is the main value of a DM screen, much more so than any use in hiding die rolls.
Why is there so much mundane detail in published adventures?
Adventures often waste a lot of text on describing the contents of mundane rooms. Why do that, when just labeling the room as "kitchen" or "well-stocked larder" and common sense should be sufficient for the DM to describe what the room contains?
First - there is actually something special going on. If there is a giant slug in the basement, the PCs might think of getting hold of a sack of salt to damage it. Does the larder have salt, and if so how much? The DM can make this up on the fly -- if the description was "well stocked larder", I would venture there is at least a medium sized sack of salt, enough for one meaningful attack comparable to alchemist fire. But if there is a whole barrel of salt, because the writer thought of the tactic, then this should be pointed out in the adventure text.
Second, it is harder than one thinks to come up with colorful descriptions of such mundane rooms on the fly, without falling into the same, repetitive stereotypes and patterns, and the writer wants to provide help.
Third, if the DM just gives a bland description of a kitchen, without calling out anything specific or unusual, this may let the players conclude that there is nothing going on there and move on. That is not necessarily bad, after all, there is nothing going on there, and players will just waste game time searching a mundane room for hidden secrets that are not there. The problem is the flip-side of this: as soon as there is a specific description, there will be something special, which acts as a filter for the players their PCs would not be aware about, and robs the game of verisimilitude. To avoid this, provide some weird details also to mundane rooms.
Fourth, the writer of the adventure did not think about how to make his design useful in play. They are the kind of writer who likes writing, and likely also write paragraphs about what the room used to contain that players will never learn about and that are irrelevant to the exploration at hand.
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