As many of you know, this past year I built out at the farm and moved in August. I downsized the house somewhat from what I had in McKinney. From a 4 bedroom w/formal dining and game room to a 3 bedroom. I’ve been working hard on trying to fit everything into the smaller house, and to quote Dolly Parton, it’s rather like trying to put ten pounds of mud in a five pound sack.

I had planned to use the larger bedroom as the sewing room / office area and keep the spare room for a guest room. I was really going to do it up nice, and have a private suite. Ah the best laid plans you know. When I really sat down to think about it, the number of times that company comes and stays for a significant visit will be very slim. Close to none. I might have a handful of people who will spend the night over a weekend but that has different requirements than long term company.

Dave Ramsey talks a lot about how our home is the largest investment we will make, then people will set aside a percentage of that investment and rarely use it. When I look at the amount of real estate taken up by the spare room, that means I’m setting aside 21% of my house and not planning to use it. Holy Smoke. That’s a lot of my big investment that I’m not planning to use on a regular basis.

So I’ve made a very difficult decision and moved my work office into the third bedroom and will put in a day bed to use when company comes. This means I can use the room 5-7 days a week every week of the year, though what it is used for can change. The decision was a difficult one to make; somehow felt like I was conceding defeat. Now that the decision is made, my whole perspective has changed.

I got the furniture moved over the thanksgiving week, and a couple of friends ran an extra LAN cable through the attic so I can connect to my network in here. I’m hanging pictures and putting things up and I’ve come to a couple of huge realizations:

1) I’m no longer hitting my head on the long arm when I back up from my desk. That area was rather tight and I bumped my head more often than I’d like to admit.

2) I have a place for my train stuff. I have a lot of train stuff, much of which I like to have out on display. Up til now I had no idea how I was going to be able to do that, but now I have a great way to display that stuff all in one place, AND it is a part of the house I am in regularly so I can enjoy it.

3) I can hang up a lot more of the pictures and mementos that I have , that were not originally part of the spare room design. Maybe that was a limitation of the original plan, but I’m happy to see that stuff out and on the walls.

4) the space vacated by the desk in the sewing room is large enough for one of the bin organizing solutions I had in the other house which means I have enough room to unpack the rest of the fabric boxes and put it away. That’s huge. I didn’t know how I was going to fit the rest of the stuff in that room.

So are you using your space effectively? Have you set aside 20% of your biggest investment and are not using it? Is there a way you can make rooms dual purpose to make other areas more functional?

I’m excited about how this will look when it is all done, how I have a space for work now, and especially how I will be utilizing all of my investment.