Why I Redesigned Our Living Area
Executive summary: I planned the layout and decor of our current home far in advance of moving, and while I largely liked it, I realized after a few months that a couple things could be improved. In a small, multifunctional space, rearranging furniture can feel like playing Tetris, but every tweak brings greater functionality and enjoyment.
Recently, I’ve been spending a lot of time looking at floor plans and considering the best furniture layout for them. Why? Well, it’s a favorite pastime, no more justification needed. But, more pragmatically … drumroll please … we just bought our first home!!! I’m only exaggerating slightly when I say I’ve been waiting my whole life for this. Probably not a lot of kids were drawing floorplans when they were 7 and planning furniture arrangements the way that other girls plan their weddings. So now I am IN MY ELEMENT, churning out furniture and decor plans for our new place so that we’ll be as prepared as possible by the time we move in March. Also, it is super helpful to get a head start on setting up our home when we have a 2yo and 5yo running around. We need to have everything planned ahead of time so we can just execute, execute, execute in the few hours/days that we have some babysitting arranged for said human hurricanes. I did the same thing when we moved into our current apartment almost 4 years ago – we had grandma watch our then-2yo son for a day while hubby and I quickly put up the curtain rods, hung the pictures, assembled IKEA furniture, and basically did everything where it’s useful/necessary to have two sets of hands or eyes (which is impossible if one of us is chasing the toddler). That meant I needed everything prepped ahead of time: hardware and art ordered, curtains cut to size, furniture delivered, etc. so we wouldn’t waste a single minute in the limited time we had to take this place from none to done.
Now, looking back, there is a downside to planning everything before we’ve had a chance to live in the space, which is that some decisions might turn out to be suboptimal. I was happy with our main living/sleeping area in this apartment, but over time, I developed some preferences that I didn’t anticipate originally. Would it have been fine to leave everything as is? Sure, it worked well enough. But am I one to pass up a (re)design opportunity? Noooo waaaay. Especially when it’s in a small space that calls for creative minimalist solutions. There were a couple of things I wanted to change about our multifunctional space:
I wanted a visual divide between the bed and the living room area, but without erecting barriers that would chop the room up.
I wanted to move the desk next to the window/sliding door so I could take advantage of the views and light while I worked there many hours a day.
I wanted more open lines of sight from the living area and kitchen to the window/sliding door, which is our only opening to the outside and sole source of natural light.
Here are photos of our previous living/sleeping area on both sides. It was functional enough, but I figured out how to make it even better after living in it for several months.
Our original living room layout was fairly open, but there was no division between the living and sleeping areas. I also assumed we wanted wardrobes for our clothing, but it turned out that we rarely needed the hanging clothes, given we can dress casually while largely working from home. I felt that those tall wardrobes loomed too much in a small space and blocked light from the only window/sliding door. As an add-on to that, my desk was on the other side of the wardrobes, so it felt darker and visually hemmed in. My solution to each one of these conundrums was simple enough:
Exchange the tall wardrobes for a shorter cabinet to house our folded clothes (which we access every day). Move the rarely worn hanging clothes to the hallway and bedroom closets. This cabinet now serves as a divider between the sleeping and living areas that still allows lines of sight and light to pass through the room unhindered.
Scoot the desk toward the window, now that the wardrobes are gone. In its place, put a bench that functions as the kids’ desk so they have a surface to work/sit/play without having to be in the bedroom. The art ledge above the bench makes it easy to swap out the decor if we ever want to repurpose the space for something else.
Provide a little storage (to replace the wardrobes) in a slim file cabinet flanking the desk to house things like our portable printer, plus add a lamp for additional light to work by when it’s dark out.
The main living/sleeping area today.
If we were to stay here for many more years, undoubtedly I would find more things to change about this room as our needs evolve. But I’ve got other fish to fry now, and I’ve learned lots of lessons about smart and stylish small space living from this apartment that I will apply to our next home. Finding an opportunity to do the actual move with a 2yo and 5yo will be the bigger challenge — it will probably involve importing a grandparent or two for babysitting while hubby and I once again hurriedly prepare the place for habitation. I’ve been very pleased with how our current home turned out, and I look forward to creating a just-as-functional, bright, and easy-to-maintain space in our next abode.