Redefining a Room’s Purpose
- Jonda Beattie
- Feb 12
- 3 min read
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Repurposed Guest Room | Repurposed Guest Room |
You move into a new home and according to the blueprint the home has a living room, a dining room, a kitchen, three bedrooms, and two baths.
It’s easy to get hung up on the idea that that’s how those spaces should be used. And at first, that may be the way they are used.
But after a while the home doesn’t really feel like it is meeting your needs.
Some of the rooms get cluttered. The dining room table is filled with paperwork or homework. You usually eat at the smaller table in the kitchen. One of the bedrooms becomes a dumping ground for items that haven’t found a real home. My clients often call it the “room of shame”.
Maybe it’s time to rethink the primary use of some rooms.
The one room that I often start with is the dining room. It is often set up with a formal dining room table and probably a cabinet and/or buffet. And this room is probably used as a formal dining room once or twice a year.
However, it is mostly used for paperwork or perhaps for children doing art projects or schoolwork or a dumping ground for items brought in from the car. Since there is no other place to put these items, the area stays cluttered.
So, accept now that this room’s primary function is home office workplace, homework station, and/or children’s craft/art space. The dining room function is now secondary.
The first step to decluttering and organizing a room with multiple uses is to remove items that are now not needed. The cabinet used to display the formal China can go. The China can also go or if is still going to be used once or twice a year, it can be boxed up and stored elsewhere. The buffet can be repurposed as storage for art/craft supplies or office supplies. A bookcase or storage cubical can be added to hold containers needed for the office or homework station. The table can have a pad on it for protection and the children can use it for artwork. If the table has leaves, they can be removed and stored in a closet to make more space. The table can be cleared off at the end of each work session so the room does not look cluttered. A small desk might be added.
Another room that has often lost its primary purpose is the guest bedroom. It often ends up as a dumping ground for items that have no home. It’s so easy to just put another box in there and shut the door.
Again, let’s say that you want to keep this room available for the occasional overnight guest but admit that this should not be its primary function. If, indeed, you do need this room to be a storage space as a primary function, decide what exactly is going to be stored in that space. If you need to store holiday decorations or off-season clothing, then make attractive storage shelving for those items. Put the items in containers. Remove other items that should be stored elsewhere or disposed of. You can repurpose the closet for storage just leaving a small space for the occasional guest to hang up a few items. You can use the dresser to store gifts, memorabilia, or off-season clothing.
One of my clients took that guest room and made it into her sewing room and a playroom for her grandchild when she visited. She used the dresser to store her sewing materials and kept a single bed for her grandchild to sleep in.
Extra bedrooms can easily be repurposed into offices, exercise rooms, or craft rooms.
It’s all about redesigning a room that meets your needs and lifestyle at this point in time.
My challenge to you is to walk through your home. Do you see some hot spots that are not working? Has your lifestyle changed since you moved into this home? Brainstorm ways that you can repurpose some of your rooms to meet your current needs and maintain your home as your refuge.
If you need some help jumpstarting a project or some guidance with organizing your time or space, reach out and we can schedule a consultation.
Phone: 404-299-5111 – call and leave a message or text
Jonda S. Beattie, Professional Organizer owner of Time Space Organization, and co-owner of Release, Repurpose, Reorganize. She is based in the Metro-Atlanta area. As presenter, award-winning author, as well as a retired special education teacher she uses her listening skills, problem solving skills, knowledge of different learning techniques, ADHD specialty, and paper management skills to help clients.
I absolutely love this topic. Taking a room that isn't really being used is what I like to call "an area of opportunity" or "low hanging fruit." I most often see this with parents of young kids or with empty nesters. These life transitions take time to process so people don't recognize immediately what these changes mean for their space. Parents with young kids have formal rooms that they simply don't need. They need an upstairs playroom because they can't simply send the kids down to the basement since they are too little. They often need to transform an upstairs guest room or home office into a new children's room. Empty nesters have the oppostite issue. They suddenly find themselves…
You're so right. Too often, people are cowed into thinking that they have to use a room for it's original purpose, the one on the blueprint, as if they aren't the ones living there. Like you, I've had clients with formal dining rooms they've never used and no place for their children to play (which didn't necessarily keep the tiny ones out of the room with the breakables). When I have suggested putting the dining room furniture into storage and turning it into a playroom so that the parents can monitor play while working in the kitchen or elsewhere downstairs, they're shocked: "We can DO that?" People also don't realize they can change how they do things temporarily, for a…
It's always a lot of fun to match a room with its actual purpose. Often it's a mindset or perspective shift. And when it's your own home, it can be more challenging to 'see' it. So enlisting help from someone else who can see things with fresh eyes can be useful. That other person doesn't have the same history with your spaces, which can be helpful.
This is a great idea. If you aren't sure what the purpose of the room should be, just look at the accumulated piles. I think you gave two wonderful examples of how to do this, and how to turn the space around to meet the actual need, instead of the "expected" need. We are the ones living in these spaces, so they should work for us, right?
I have a friend who turned her dining room into a home office and it came out so great. The french doors allowed her a bit of sound protection and privacy, while still letting her be aware of what was happening in the house. It's so much better to make the decision to…