Some links in this post may or may not be affiliate links. If you click on an affiliate link I will earn a commission which supports this site.
Turning your guest bedroom into a guest bedroom / office:
Guest bedrooms are well and good, but by design they’re not in use all of the time. If your guest bedroom acts as a dumping ground for a variety of junk when people aren’t staying in it, you might benefit from re-purposing it slightly into a guest bedroom / office combo. Here’s a few steps you can take to achieve this:
Get a desk:
The centerpiece of most office spaces is the desk, so this should be high on your list of priorities. Depending how concealed you want the office elements of the room to be when guests are using it, you might consider a fold-away desk – this opens up the space for guests, as well as encouraging a tidy desk area (you can’t fold the desk up if it’s covered in clutter!).
Get a multi-purpose bed:
No matter how relaxed your work ethic, a bed in the middle of your office space isn’t particularly helpful! Choosing a bed that doubles up as something else, such as a sofa bed or wall bed, is a great way to contribute to the dual purpose guest bedroom / office – sofa beds usually go pretty cheap too (see these examples from The Original Factory Shop). Whereas a sofa bed will give you a comfy place to respite from your office work, wall beds will be hidden completely when not in use, opening up the room quite significantly.
Include storage space:
If you’ll be folding up the desk and transforming the room relatively frequently, you’ll want enough storage space to make the transition painless. Standard shelving installed above the desk can be a good way to store books and documents, and bigger items like the printer and computer can be moved into a cupboard if necessary, or perhaps kept in under-bed storage boxes. It’s a nice gesture to have some empty storage space for the guests to use, too. A chest of drawers or wardrobe for guests to keep their luggage in will be appreciated more than living out of their suitcases, especially for longer stays.
Added bonus – de-clutter:
Rearranging or redecorating a room is a great premise for sorting through some of the junk that might be being kept in there. You could take this opportunity to finally sort through the boxes that were left there on move-in day, and free up some permanent space in your home. Whilst this can be a difficult step to take, there are ways of ensuring you don’t throw away anything you’ll miss later – one such method is to organize everything into three piles (one to keep, one to donate, one to throw away) and leave a couple of days between sorting and taking action to ensure the decisions you’ve made are the right ones.
Hopefully these steps have inspired you to investigate making your guest bedroom more versatile and, in the process, freer of clutter!
Guest post provided by Chris Lee.
