Flex Spaces Are Best Spaces

I freaking love flex spaces. Flex spaces are key to use maximization in small houses, especially for families. Having spaces that can serve multiple purposes, at the same time and sequentially over time, is huge. We are lucky to have a very spacious bonus room above our garage, which basically doubles the amount of “communal” space in our house. When the kids were little, it allowed us to have a dedicated play area – full of the usual toys and baby gear – away from our main reception space, the living room. It gave us some breathing room so we didn’t feel like we were drowning in colourful plastic. But it was also a place to store books. An ever-growing number of them. Now that the kids are older, everyone in the family is looking for space to chill in peace away from everyone else; the bonus room is a premium “chill out” zone. And it also doubles as a guest bedroom when needed. Last year, we replaced the couch – which has now relocated to the basement – with a daybed, which can be used both as a sofa and as a bed (it has a proper mattress).

Here was the room about a year into our living in the house; my husband had just added the bookshelves, which completely transformed the space:

But it didn’t look like this for long. Believe me when I tell you that the room looked vastly different when its floor space was taken up by baby gates and rubber mats, and one wall of shelving was filled with nothing but toy bins. We’ve had 3 different couches in this room over time, each one geared towards the needs of the moment. The one in the above photo came from my husband’s college era apartment. The one we had when the kids were babies was a huge, microfiber sectional that we got secondhand, which saw a lot of abuse in its time. The third couch was a major upgrade: a brand-new sectional in a vaguely mid-century style which reflected the ongoing “maturation” of the room along with that of our youngest family members; this piece is now living its second life in the basement.

It’s safe to say that the look of the room now is a reflection of the growth of our family, the development of our aesthetic instincts, and years of collecting via thrift. Most of the décor items are secondhand treasures. The furniture currently occupying this space, apart from the daybed, has been “recycled” from other parts of the house. It all works together … but it didn’t come together overnight.

Here is the side which has has the biggest “glow up” in many ways — it used to be dedicated to toys and children’s books (which have been relocated), and it’s now a space for art & design books, my collection of magazines, and plants.

That blue chair, by the way, is a piece of furniture that my husband built back in his undergrad days. I love having a little piece of personal history tucked away here, amid other accumulated memories of our life together. I’ve spent a lot of time over the years curating various little “vignettes” around the room, and it brings me so much joy to see them all coming together.

The room has no experienced its last evolution; more changes will be afoot in years to come. We need to change the carpet and plan to put in either hardwood or laminate. Area rug(s) to follow, I am sure. There are also 2 rolling staircases that we have been waiting to install, once the kids are old enough. And we will be painting the walls (along with the rest of the house) to match the creamy white we have selected for the basement. We think that colour will really set off the art we have on the walls. And I am sure there will be other changes that aren’t even on our radar at the moment. But that is the beauty of a living space.