Divide and Conquer

Remember when I first showed you our guest room in our rental home in Ohio? Remember how we ended up changing it to be our 6-year-old's room? Remember how I said it is also where I store my craft supplies and it can easily accommodate guests? Yeah, it's time to see how all that works.

First up, let's review how this room fills the needs of the little dude who lives here. Jonathan sleeps here at night, plays quietly here at rest time, and changes his clothes in the morning and evening. That means he needs a bed,

 
a few toys and books,

places for his clean and dirty clothes,

and a smattering of things around the room to make it feel like it's HIS.

 Next, let's look at where I store my craft supplies.

Jonathan uses one drawer in the desk and I get the rest. I keep some scrap book supplies here like my cutters and pens. I will sometimes use the desk or the bed for a quick project, like hot-gluing a frame back together, or cutting down a paper to the right size. But if I were to really tackle a project, I would take my supplies to the dining room table.

I keep papers and stickers in the top half of the dresser and Jonathan uses the bottom half. One basket on top of the dresser has ribbons and things in it, while the small basket with the puppy is for our little boy's treasures he's always finding--rocks and feathers and such.

I keep the rest of the scrap book supplies as well as other miscellaneous crafty things in these boxes in the closet which leaves plenty of space for Jonathan's dress clothes to hang and for his dirty laundry bin on the floor.

Oh! I almost forgot, I keep wrapping paper in long, flat bins under the bed! I've done that for years and love it. When I need to wrap a present I usually pull out the needed bin (one for birthdays, one for Christmas) and either wrap the present on the floor or on the bed. Some day I'll have a cute wrapping station, but for now, this totally works. (Sorry no picture!)

Ok, so next is how this room would work as a guest room! We haven't needed it as such since Jonathan moved in, but we would only need to change a few things to make a guest feel comfortable here.

This picture is from before I moved the collage on the wall out to the hall. (You can see that here!) But it shows a well-made bed with different pillows that are only for guests.

There is room for hang-up clothes in the closet and the chair can be placed between the bed and dresser to act as a luggage rack. Of course there would be a stack of fresh towels for our guest and anything else they might need.

As to where a certain little boy would sleep, he is already looking forward to "camping" in his brothers' room!

What about you? Do you have a dedicated guest room that no one else uses? Do your guests share a room with a member of your family, or does someone move out for them? We're looking forward to hosting a guest or two in the near future!