Make the Home You Have the Home You Love
Recently I featured my own living/dining room combination on MORE Good Day Oregon, using it as a case study and inspiration for YOUR room makeovers. (see the segment recap here)
Too often, we feel we have limited space in our homes. Our cramped experience of our home can cause us to feel crowded and uncomfortable, and even precipitate a household move.
But it doesn’t have to be that way.
I’m going to share with you a TUTORIAL on ROOM CONVERSIONS…..
What’s a “room conversion?” you ask?
It’s a way to reclaim real estate in your home!
It means throwing out the “floor plan” with its assigned traditional rooms and creating space that makes sense for you, your family, and your season of life!
1. Simply take an objective look at your home and find those rooms that aren’t used very often. You’re looking for neglected spaces. Consider which spaces are stagnant and abandoned.
Living rooms are likely suspects, collecting inherited furniture and dust.
Dining rooms are a close second, showcasing grandma’s china and hosting gatherings every other year.
And, of course, “spare rooms” are often nothing more than dumping grounds for “go elsewhere” items.
In our own home, the floor plan and former owners had a traditional living room and dining room, complete with white carpet.
With our kids and pets, we knew that the space AND the carpet was not long for this world.
2. Once you’ve zeroed in on the space you want to reclaim for better use, you will want to decide the PURPOSE of the new space.
In our case, as soon as we moved into our farmhouse, we knew that the former living/dining room combo was destined for KID CENTRAL.
We needed that space to accommodate our homeschool, which includes a library, curriculum, craft supplies, and Lego building area.
Understanding a space’s intended purpose from the beginning is essential to keeping OUT nomadic items.
Since we determined this was a space that was to serve the kid’s educational and play needs; ALL items related to the kids were moved categorically to this space and zones were created for crafting, games, toys, curriculum, and books. When these items land elsewhere in the home, they are swiftly relocated to Kid Central.
3. As you’re taking back under-utilized space, determine what FEATURES you need from the space.
In our case, there were two necessary features:
- Openness – with our homeschool co-op we needed the space to accommodate up to 12 kids at a time.
- This precipitated a “peripheral” furniture/storage design where all units were pushed up against all the walls.
- This was also our chance to rip up the carpet and opt instead for a painted work room floor.
- Work Space – we needed space for crafting, spreading out school projects, and of course, building with insane amounts of Lego bricks. This meant we needed a big work table and a U-shaped arrangement of desks for building.
4. Finally, be conscious of the AESTHETICS of your reclaimed room.
Because our long kid-centric room contains sometimes unsightly and gangly toys I didn’t want to SEE these items (or surfaces covered with Lego) when I glance in the room.
So these items were tucked around corners and out of the line of sight when you look into the room from other rooms.
I put a comfortable chair, lamp, and mirror in the line-of-sight instead so that the room is inviting to enter instead of feeling like a storage room for toys and supplies.
Even if you don’t have kids at home, you can take back the living and dining room for better (and unique!) use. Here is a sample of a project one of our professional organizing consultants did for one of our clients:
A Surprise Makeover
One local family has learned how to simplify and to take back under-used rooms, converting them into fun and functional spaces. Mark and Edie Marshall completed their own home “makeover.” And it didn’t involve buying more décor or trading up.
Several years ago Mark’s Christmas present to Edie was the only thing she really wanted…a gift certificate for professional organizing services. Edie had seen local organizing expert Vicki Norris (and President of Portland-based Restoring Order) on television on HGTV’s Mission: Organization and KATU’s AM Northwest and she told Mark that she wanted help getting organized. Her mother had passed a few years prior and she was having a hard time “letting go” and decluttering.
The organizing services that started as Mark’s surprise gift to his wife has now transformed their household, and they say – their lives.
An Enlightening Process
In the organizing process Mark and Edie discovered that they were not using their home to its best potential. There was a clutter in almost every room and things didn’t seem to have a home. As a result, they felt like they were always “cleaning up” but never getting anywhere. Prior to their organizing makeover, their weekends were dedicated to the endless chore of “tidying up”.
After they began working with Restoring Order, one household-organizing project led to another and as their progress grew, so did Edie’s confidence and readiness to tackle more sensitive projects…like her mother’s furniture residing in the living and dining room.
“We had a lot of square footage that we were wasting,” Edie admits. Like most formal rooms, the living room and dining room spaces were never used in the Marshall household. They simply served as storage spaces for vases, china, and tableware and Edie’s mother’s furniture. “I wouldn’t let my son go in there,” Edie explains, “there was too much in there that was breakable. So we just ignored those rooms. We thought we were going to use those rooms for entertaining but that just never happened.” The Marshalls needed a room conversion, a specialty of Restoring Order.
The Room Conversions
From the very first appointment Edie remembers her Restoring Order organizing consultant casting a vision for how their living and dining room could be used. In the assessment, our Order Restorer listened intently to Edie and also picked up on the clues she found throughout the Marshall’s home. She noted the couple’s love of Las Vegas, their large amount of memorabilia (stashed away in boxes in the garage and attic), and their personal style. As the couple’s confidence grew, she urged them to take back the two rooms in the home that were only serving as a “museum” to inherited furniture and knick knacks. She encouraged Mark and Edie to rescue their beloved memorabilia from the newspaper filled boxes and put it out where they could enjoy it.
She knew Mark loved poker and helped him to envision his dining room as a new “game room” where his card table (currently leaning against the wall in the dining room) could stay out all the time and where he could entertain his friends. She reminded him about the cool artwork she had seen stored away and commented how nice it would look in a room dedicated to card playing and entertaining. He was sold and as the dining room began to disappear, Mark’s dream poker room began to take shape. “Mark has always wanted to host the poker tournament at our house,” Edie grins, “and now he can!”
Our organizing consultant also knew Edie wanted to honor her late parents and their love of Vegas. She helped Edie to start dreaming about a fabulous Vegas-themed media room in place of the stale and avoided living room. Edie remembers, “At first, it was not an option to part with my mother’s furniture. But then I guess I finally realized I could bless somebody else with all the stuff I was holding onto.”
And so it happened. The Marshalls were ready for their room conversion. Their dining room became a game room and their living room was transformed into a media room. The walls were painted. Their pinball machine demarcated the two rooms. The dated furniture that wasn’t “them” was passed on to family members and the hip new black leather couch arrived for the media room. The sideboard for the poker chips and cards and shot glasses was put into place in the game room. The Vegas pictures and photos and memorabilia came out of hiding and were proudly positioned in places of honor.
Bringing Dreams to Life
“I can’t even put into words how much this has changed my life,” Edie says softly, “I wouldn’t let anybody in my front door before Restoring Order. Whenever we were going to have any function, I would take about two weeks to prepare and just shove everything everywhere.” Now ready for hospitality, Edie says “Now anyone can drop by anytime and I love it! We are the fun house!”
The Marshall’s son Nelson has also begun to enjoy hosting guests as well. Edie notes, “The biggest change is how happy my son is to finally have a play area now. His friends don’t fit into his bedroom and now they can watch movies, play the Wii, enjoy cards, and entertain in our former living room.”
Unencumbered by clutter and the stress that goes with it, the Marshalls are hosting parties and their home has turned into a destination for friends of all ages. Best of all, Mark noted “This has been worth every penny, now that we have our Sundays back to do nothing!”
Related:
- Watch the Room Conversion segment featured on More Good Day Oregon
- For information about organizing services sign-up to receive our free monthly inspirational e-newsletter!
- Learn more about our Professional Organizing Services
- Read Vicki’s book “Restoring Order to Your Home” to learn about making your space work for you!
