I was wondering how many of us have a guest room. And by guest room, I mean a nice queen sized bed in a room that you don't use for other stuff (except you tell guests not to look in that closet, please). The idea is when you host Christmas or Easter weekends, you will have an extra room for folks to stay that ISN'T your toddler's room with the extra twin bed, thereby eliminating having a guest in YOUR room by the name of your youngest child, royally pissed because Grandma GiGi has taken over his space.
We have a four bedroom house, with four inhabitants. Generous as we are, the Hubs and I are willing to share our room with each other, so that leaves one extra. Originally, we thought, hey! A guest room! I made the bed all pretty and put lavender hand soap and decor in that side of the jack and jill bath. We had a few guests, and when my Daddy came to visit he always had a place to bunk. But about 355 of 365 days in the year, the room was vacant. And it had to be cleaned/dusted. Air conditioned. Vacuumed. Furnished. Insured. Mortgaged.
You get where I am going with this, right? While many guest rooms serve double duty as a music room, craft room (which was my mother's doing), or workout area, I have found that those of us who are "blessed" (I hate that expression) with the superfluousness of a guest room rarely enter it or use it for other functions.
What a waste.
Ours has become useful because somehow our younger son has what I call "crap creep", meaning much of his stuff has found its way into our "spare" bedroom. We don't even kid ourselves that it's a guest room anymore. My parents' old love seat from their home is their in lieu of a bed, and Boy #2 uses the room primarily as his parlor. Desk for homework in there. Guitar for practicing Led Zeppelin riffs. It's his mini man cave.
I can't really eliminate an extra room in our house to minimize, I realize. So I take solace in the fact we are at least USING the room I am heating and cooling. The idea of rooms not being used in a house really drives me nuts. We don't have a "formal living" or a "breakfast nook". We have one table at which to eat, and we use bar stools when the table is full. And yes, at Thanksgiving, someone may not have a seat at the table. And somehow we all still manage to be thankful.
So where, you ask, will Aunt Edith and Uncle Earl stay when they come visit? I mean, his back isn't what it used to be, and she just hates those lumpy hotel beds rife with bedbugs. You can (1) give up your master suite and bunk with the kids, (2) send Edith and Earl to a nicer hotel with the cash you save from not having that extra square footage, or (3) have them stay at your sister's, because she doesn't read my blog. Ah, the choices!
If you are downsizing out of want or or out of necessity, keep in mind you can only be in one place at a time when you eat or sleep. Extra is really not that great once you do the math on cost per square foot. Those "spare" rooms really are spare, and, if no one is even impressed enough to look at them, why do we care?
And get to cleaning out that guest rooms closet, too. You KNOW they are going to look, even though you warned them not to!
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