5 Ways to Revamp Your Home’s Most Underused Spaces
It’s a common theme: families tend to spend most of their time in only a few rooms of their homes, leaving the rest of the rooms hardly used. There’s a solution for wasted space: repurposing your rooms. Just because a specific room was originally meant for a certain purpose doesn’t mean is has to stay that way forever. Here are some ideas for revamping the most underused spaces in your home.
Breakfast Nook Can Now be a Desk Area
It sounds quaint and cute, but a breakfast nook really can be a waste of space. Many home owners may find that this area tends to be where mail and paperwork piles up, rather than where a nice meal in the morning can be enjoyed. If you find yourself in this situation, consider formally transforming this little area to what you’re already using it for. Optimize it as a desk area by installing storage units to help eliminate clutter and make working and organizing a lot more convenient.
Tiny Bedroom Can be a Walk-In Closet
An extra small bedroom is hardly useable. Rather than letting this space go to waste, consider converting it into an awesome walk-in closet. If you’re tired of cramming all your clothes and shoes into your current closet, a large walk-in closet equipped with closet organizers can be much more enjoyable and practical. Drawers, shelves, rods at various heights and shoe racks can make this closet something that rivals that of Carrie Bradshaw.
It’ll be a lot easier to find what you’re looking for when it’s neatly put away rather than stuffed behind other crumpled up garments. If the room is right beside your master bedroom, consider removing the adjoining wall to give you instant access without having to leave the room.
Oversized Great Room Can be an Open Concept Living, Dining and Study Space
If you’re blessed with a ton of square footage in your home, that’s great. But sometimes spaces can be a little too big when it comes to making the area cozy and figuring out how to furnish it. If you’ve got a great room, try revamping it in such a way that aligns more closely with the way you and your family lives.
You can actually divide the space up to create more than one type of “room.” For instance, one section of the room can be the living area, while the section closest to the kitchen can be a dining area. This is especially useful if you don’t have a formal dining room. And if you’ve got no room for an office, you can set up a mock office area in one part of the room as well. The options are seemingly endless.
Dining Room Can Be a Playroom
Probably one of the most underused rooms in a home is the formal dining room. Especially in homes that feature an eat-in kitchen, there’s less of a reason to use the dining room. Odds are, you probably use your dining room (if you have one) once or twice a year, unless you’re an avid entertainer.
If you have children, and don’t really want them messing up their rooms with toys or throwing them in the basement by themselves to play, why not convert the dining room into a playroom? It won’t be a playroom forever – the kids will eventually grow up. But until then, keep the toys in one neat place and the kids near you by transforming your underused dining room into a space the kids can call their own.
Mudroom Into a Large Laundry Room
Mudrooms can be pretty handy, but if you’re finding this space being used more as a trash bin, perhaps it’s time to come up with a better idea for the space. If your laundry machine is way down in the basement, consider converting your mudroom into a large main-floor laundry room. That way you’ll have more space to put some countertops and shelving to make it easier to fold laundry. And having it on the main floor instead of in the basement makes it a lot more convenient compared to lugging heavy laundry baskets up and down the stairs.
There’s no sense paying for square footage if it’s not even going to be used. Repurposing a room that’s hardly visited can add a level of practicality to your home life, and can possibly add a little extra value to your home. Ask a professional real estate agent what types of rooms add the most value to properties to really boost your ROI.
