Making good use of a flex room

Hi all! It has been a while, a long while and I will be giving an update within a separate post on where I have been this past year. But first, I wanted to share how I have been Making good use of a flex room.

Before we jump into this flex room idea just wanted to let you know there will be another post this week with a little update about me, nothing dramatic or clickbait-y. I just feel I owe you all lovelies an explanation about my disappearing act this past year. Even with my lack of updates on the blog I have been spending this past year (the Covid-19 pandemic stuck at home year) making my house even more perfectly us.

In this era of quarantine and stay at home orders we have all utilized our home in ways we never thought we would. My family of 5 have had to add an office for my husband in the basement and a school zone for my three kids. Which is where this making good use of a flex room comes in. Our sitting room!

Guys, this flex room has been a lot of different things. Which, to be fair is the entire point of a flex room, I think it was originally planned as the formal dining room but we are not formal dining room kind of people.

The journey of this flex room –

A dining room with just a few renditions of furniture arrangement

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A family room, which was cozy and wonderful

An office/music room

I could not make these pictures bigger, this was early in the days of my blogging and it was the best I could manage apparently.

Art room for my kids

Yes, all in this small and dark flex room with three walls it has been all of these things. This room is now down to two walls after our big time kitchen renovation. Long story short it is the epitome of a flex room, it has been extremely flexible. Here we are, over a decade in this house and I finally have landed on a functional, stylish and comfortable use of this space. All while allowing that much needed ease of walking from one of the house to the other.

I present to you our sitting room! I know, it makes us sound very fancy but bare with me… there is no TV in here or a table. Not a lot of windows so a sunroom is out. Sitting room it is!

In the beginning of 2020 just as it was setting in we were going to be home for a loooong time I decided to update the furniture in here. I built these DIY floating shelves (tutorial of these coming soon!) and also added 4 amazing arm chairs. I got these from Overstock.

I adore these 4 beauties and they are so comfortable! They swivel and most of the chairs have material I can take off and wash.

But it was not meant to be as this for long. This room is pretty much the hub and passthrough in our living area. It is open to the living room and front door. It also opens into the kitchen and dining room. The hallway also opens into this room. I am just explaining why it has been a journey making good use of a flex room because of the headache that is it’s location. Lots of foot traffic so I needed to reconfigure the furniture to make the flow of traffic easier. The four big armchairs could not fit in here comfortably. I moved two of them into my bedroom and kept two in this room.

I had this narrow gray sofa from Ikea that was in the basement, I moved back up here into this sitting room. The narrow fit of this works perfectly for the room.

The biggest addition to this flex room is the cabinets and the open floating shelving! The cabinets are actually upper kitchen cabinets. As I said earlier, I will break down how I made these into a faux built in credenza next week. It was such a simple DIY project I am so excited to share with you all!

I am going to share the DIY tutorial for each of these in seperate blog posts. Today is all about sharing the space as it looks.

For now the cabinets house all of my kids school curriculum. They are currently doing a homeschool/online school hybrid thing. We have tons of books, workbooks, folders, papers, computers and other school paraphernalia. I knew when lockdown happened and my kids were schooling at home I needed a designated zone for their stuff. I could not deal with it cluttering up the dining table, kitchen island or living room.

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Hidden storage for this flex room

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I am affected by my surrounding so much, if things are messy or cluttered I feel like a hot mess. In the throes of Covid stay at home orders, three kids, two dogs, two guinea pigs, a pet bunny and a working from home husband I needed to minimize as much chaos as possible.

This was my brilliant solution that finally, FINALLY made this flex room make sense! It was a journey to get here. As I shoes you this room had so many different configurations and uses. Which in hindsight, I am happy it took me this long to figure it out.

The view of this flex room/sitting room from the living room –

A home is just as evolving as the people in it. When I had a gaggle of babies and toddlers I wanted their playroom smack dab in the middle of my house. Then as they got older an art room zone was needed. Once we moved their playroom to the basement an office for my budding blog career was needed.

Now, I need to lock the door and put headphones on to drown out my three loves that are preteen status, they can fend for themselves. The dining room worked great in this room for a while but I personally dislike the one tiny window here. It is a weird hang up I have, but I like the dining table in the kitchen area where we have big windows that look out to the back yard.

See what I mean? This sitting room/homeschool room/library took years and tons of changes to settle into where it is. In the time of decorating shows revamping a space in 30 minutes or less we all feel that need to finalize everything in our home ASAP. I have fallen into that unrealistc expectation trap as well.

This room, this flex space has proven to me that patience does pay off. Instant gratification and revamping it in big ways years ago would have changed how I use this space now. As it is it can grow and evolve with us.

When my kids go back to regular school the cabinets will be where we store some entertaining dishes, alcohol and glasses. It will become our bar area. You know, when we can have people over. Remember that? Good times!

Until then it is where my kids school things are organized. We wake up each weekday and their curriculum for the day is organized on top of the cabinets. They spread out around the house, either in the armchairs, on the sofa, in the living room, at the kitchen island or even outside if the weather cooperates. But we have a hub for their school stuff, and most importantly a place for it to go when done for the day.

Can we pause all of this making good use of a flex room talk and focus on the absolute star of this show? Teddy! My sweet and perfectly posed Havanese dog. I am not even exaggerating a little when I say that once I get my camera out and start taking pictures of a room he sits so pretty staring at me, just waiting for his close-up. This good boy delivers, werk it Teddy!

On the weekend days this room becomes where Dale and I talk and drink coffee in the morning while our kids gorge themselves on too much surgery cereal and binge watch Netflix or Disney+. In the evenings and afternoons we read in here, listen to music or talk. All while the dogs nap on the gray sofa with their too loud snores and drool all over the fabric. Did I mention the sofa is also slipcovered? My home may look “Pinterest ready” but it is all based in realistic expectations on how we use our home.

We put our feet up, laugh loud, play music, relax, get dirt on the furniture, draw in a sketch book in a comfy chair, have movie nights and eventually have people over again to fill our house with even more laughter and good memories. I need my home to function, be comfortable and be stylish. I like my house to look decorated but lived in. This room and Making good use of a flex room is just another way I have managed to carve out a little more of that balance of function and style in terms of home decorating.

You guys, I may have been MIA but I have done a ton of home projects. I had to keep my sanity somehow this past year. I am so excited to start rolling out the updates. I am thinking a post sharing all of the updates is a must on my to-do list. Next week I will be sharing the how to for the cabinets in this sitting room, then the floating shelving. For now, lets just relax and chat about Making good use of a flex room!

Have you done any home improvement projects in this past year? Tell me about them!