Unused Spaces and Untapped Potential
Back in 2011, while I was writing a book called All the Money in the World, I interviewed architect Sarah Susanka about the size and scale of American homes. Susanka, author of the Not So Big House series of books, noted that she encountered many homes with unusable rooms — spaces that didn’t reflect how people actually lived. Such waste could be pricey for normal folks, but Susanka reported that even her clients with unlimited budgets tended to be happiest with everyday uses for spaces. The goal should be to use “every square foot, every day.” I love this idea. It was certainly a goal when we spent over a year renovating the historic house I now live in.
By repurposing space with an eye toward how you actually live, a house can feel more functional — and more like home. This is a lesson I learned firsthand during our own home renovation journey. You see, when my family lived in a New York City apartment, we definitely used every square foot every day, because we didn’t have a choice. Then we moved to the suburbs. In the course of hunting for houses, I quickly saw what Susanka was talking about with unusable rooms.
There’s often a big open entry way, but the family enters through the garage. There’s a separate formal dining room, but the family eats in the kitchen. There’s a fancy living room, created for entertaining, but the family hangs out in a different room with the television where toys are always underfoot (and when guests do come, they tend to hang out in the kitchen!). Sometimes life shifts and rooms get used. Pre-pandemic a lot of “home offices” functioned as storage spaces. Now, many get used 2-3 times per week. But sometimes a more explicit rethink is required.
Rethinking Unused Spaces
In our case, we actually knocked down the walls between a few small, unusable rooms and created a playroom. We put the kids’ computer in the dining room and I do my puzzles on the dining room table — so it functions more as an evening hangout space than anything else. We also put the instruments and music in the formal living room so it is our practice and concert space. One of my favorite transformations: The closet in my office has become my podcast recording studio and Zoom space! I’d worried I’d need to rent recording space elsewhere but it turns out with a little soundproofing it works just fine.
So if you, too, are pondering your space, and how it’s used, it might help to remember that a home exists to serve you. If you don’t need a space in its traditional function, you don’t need to preserve it for that function. You might be able to use it in a different way.
First, study how you spend your hours at home. Think about how you’d like to spend your hours. Think about how your family spreads out over your space and what they tend to do. How could your space support that? So, for instance, if you’re not doing a lot of formal entertaining, maybe that formal living room could become a playroom. My guess is the toys already migrate there. Now you can just embrace it — keeping a sofa for a parent to sit and relax, and buying a few nice looking baskets so putting the toys away is a quick job.
Rethinking the Unused Home Office
According to interior designers, families are finding more inventive uses for the spaces described by real estate agents as “bonus rooms.” Among major home renovation projects, updating a home office provides the puniest return on the investment when a home is resold, according to Remodeling magazine’s Cost vs. Value Report 2013. So it’s no surprise that families are turning what was once an office into a game room, dressing room or homework hub for the kids.
“I get this question a lot,” says Elizabeth cb Marsh, an associate interior designer at Baltimore-based Jenkins Baer Associates. When a client wants to make over an office, she usually recommends trying to preserve any built-in features, such as shelving or cabinetry. If the space is large enough, she says, some clients add a pool table to create a billiards room. If the space has a wood counter, it can be covered with waterproof material such as stone to create a wet bar.
A smaller office can have a second life as a dressing room, by installing a wall of shelving for shoes and clothes. Marsh suggests using a neutral wall color and adding a pair of sconces and a tufted ottoman at the center of the room, as well as a floor mirror and vanity. Families with children might want to turn the space into place for doing homework, says Pam Ginocchio, co-founder of the children’s design blog Project Nursery. She recommends giving each child a space at a small metal desk in a fun color, a clip-on lamp and a comfy chair. You can also add some beanbag chairs and mount floating shelves to display books that entice young readers.
Making the Most of Every Square Foot
If you eat at your kitchen table, then a dining room could become a crafting or game room, or a library for a book lover — or your real home office (so you don’t have to use a corner of your bedroom or the kitchen table!). My guess is you don’t have more than a few dinner parties every year anyway. Have people eat in the kitchen, or take everyone out to a restaurant. That would be a better use of resources than not using available space.
If you’ve got a guest room but don’t have many overnight guests, maybe it can be something else — a movie room for movie buffs or a music room if you’ve got lots of family members who play instruments. Or a playroom or home gym or home office, or whatever you’d actually use. Perhaps you enter through the garage, and your front foyer sits empty. If you’ve got a green thumb, perhaps that becomes your plant room so you can finally use that giant window over the door. Or build in some bookshelves and make this the library you’ve always dreamed of. Maybe your entry way could even fit the piano you’ve been hoping to start playing again.
Now, to be sure, habits don’t always follow possessions; plenty of people buy treadmills and never use them. But if a space is not being used, you may as well try shaping it to an activity you think you would do. Doing so increases the chances that you do use every square foot, every day. And that will most likely make you happier in your home.
