Name that Room!

Let's talk about multi-purpose rooms -- those in our home that serve two or more functions. A problem with a combination room -- guest room/office/craft room/exercise room/whatever -- is that what the room is becomes so muddied. It becomes a little bit of everything but nothing of one thing, and as a result, the room is no longer ideal for any one function.

Let's say you have a formal dining room. Since there are only two of you and you hardly have others over for dinner, the dining room table is often used for crafts and sewing. Your craft stuff is strewn around or tucked in a corner amongst typical dining room items. It is not the perfect dining area as it looks and it is not the perfect sewing/craft room as it is set up.

Here's another example: you use the spare room on the main floor for both a home office and guest bedroom. To accommodate guests, you have a bed in the room. Even though you want to be able to have a guest sleep there, you might only have company stay over 5 times a year. Let's say you do home-office-type work in that room almost every day, Mon -Fri. This means you use the room as a home office approx. 260 days versus 5 days as a guest room; mathematically, the use as a home office is close to 75% and as a guest room around 2%.

In the case of the dining room: why not convert to a craft room and spruce up the kitchen table if you ever have company over for dinner? Store the china and other dining room items somewhere convenient but not out in the open. In the case of the guest room/office: why should the bed be in the room all the time? Is there another solution -- something you could set up when the occasion arises? Why not focus on the main function and serve that?

Consider if this applies to any rooms in your house. Some food for thought...