Sunday, April 13, 2008

Making Your Home Useful

The rooms, closets and areas of your home can be used however you wish. Really, it's OK to use your home however you wish.

In our home, I sold our dining room furniture on eBay and moved in our keyboard, electric guitar & drumset. Now, we have an awesome music room! Dining room furniture is known to be one of the most unused items in your home. (plus I got tired of dusting it)

"Vickie's" intentions were to have the basement in her home be a place where her kids could play with their toys. Though being downstairs and quite chilly, the kids did not play in the basement. Most of the time they played in the living room.

Vickie has a coat closet, as many homes do, right as you walked into her home. After chatting with her a bit, she realized that the closet was really being used to store coats and items not being used. When there is a party, where do your guest coats end up? If you are like Vickie and myself, on someone's bed.
(and if not.....well, your just weird)



The idea Vickie and I had was to add some big shelves to her coat closet and creating an area for the kids to store games, toys, books and such. Putting these items in the same room as their use would not only make it easy for them to use but more importantly, easy for them to put their stuff away.

Best of all, if Vickie decides later that she no longer wants the added shelves and wishes to use the closet for coats again, all she has to do is pop out the shelves. No tools required. How cool is that!

When the shelves were finished, Vickie's daughter helped me place some of her toys in her new toy closet. A closet that was really not being used, now has a function for the whole family to enjoy.

So go ahead, look around your home.......

What room in your home could you use differently?

Note: the video of me installing this project will be aired this week on CBS - WTOL. Oh don't worry, it will be posted here asap.

1 comment:

Phyllis said...

I actually got rid of my kitchen table, and kept the dining room table. I turned my breakfast nook into a sunroom because it is banked with windows. I included comfy chairs, a coffee table, and an end table-it gets way more use now. I also found a coffee table for the attached family room that has 4 stools. The table is on a hydraulic system, so I can take it from coffee table level to bar-height quickly (and all points in between). One of the best moves, furniture-wise and decorating-wise, I've ever made.