Small House Tour Bonus Room: How to Use Flexible Space for Your Family’s Day-to-Day Needs
Our family of five lives in a 2-bedroom, 1-bathroom 650 square foot cottage in the country. And it is a little tight sometimes! But one of the saving graces of our living set up is a detached cabin on the side of the deck that serves as a flexible space for our family. It is about 100 square feet, and it also has a loft above part of the room. It’s amazing how frequently we use this flexible space during our day to day life.
In this post, I’ll share some tips on how to use a flexible space to meet needs that arise throughout the day, or week, or during different seasons of life. I’ve got some photos to show how we set up our detached cabin. And I’ll share about what we keep in the cabin and how we use it regularly.
Tip #1 for How to Use Flexible Space: Prioritize the Purpose(s) of the Space
I have set up our flexible space to be able to use for four regular purposes.
We use our flexible space almost every day as a play area for the girls. It is a great spot for the girls to play when Lazlo is napping. It is also a great place for them to play when Lazlo is awake and they don’t want him disturbing their play.
Another common use for our flexible space is as a computer work zone for Gabe. One day a week he works on schooling, and the detached cabin is a great place to focus. Especially in the morning while I’m homeschooling the kids and getting through our morning routine and chores. Usually on Sunday afternoons or in the evening, he also does a couple hours of youtube channel work. Once again, he can make noise (recording, doing chop tests, etc) without worrying about disturbing the family.
Third, we use our detached cabin regularly as a guest room or a space sleeping zone. We have a queen bed out there, so it is the obvious spot to use for overnight company to stay. But it is also a sleeping zone for if we watch extra kids overnight, or if Lazlo is being particularly difficult to get to sleep and we need to put the girls in a quiet place. The kiddos love to have sleepovers with me or Gabe out in the detached cabin as well. And during postpartum, Gabe and I often find that we get much better quality sleep if one of us can go get solid sleep.
And a fourth purpose is as a storage spot. That isn’t my favorite use of the space, but it is a reality that sometimes you gotta store stuff for awhile!
Tip #2 for How to Use Flexible Space: Minimize What You Can
I realize I’m probably a bit of a broken record when it comes to this… But I am a big believer in trying to get rid of excess stuff to make it easier to maintain what you have! It would be easy to allow our detached cabin to be a dumping zone and become a wall to wall storage space. And I will admit, there are seasons when it gets far more piled up then I prefer! But I work really hard to keep the space functioning for the purposes we like to use it for. And that includes keeping spaces cleared so Gabe can do computer work and having open floor space for the kids to play.
I debated for quite a while about putting the queen size bed out there. We had an air mattress that we could blow up for overnight guests. But having a bed permanently set up really makes it handy as a sleeping zone. And particularly in the season we’re in right now, it’s a sleeping spot at least three times per week. So it seems worth it to devote a large chunk of space to having a comfortable, permanent bed.
But there are a lot of things I intentionally choose to not store now that we have a bed set up and wanting to keep the purposes we use the flexible space in mind. I am constantly reducing our kids stored clothing amounts to keep their stored, off-season clothes to fit the space parameters I have set (3 totes) rather than expanding into more totes and more space. I’ve also downsized my baby gear and cloth diaper supply quite a bit, keeping what I feel like is truly JUST what we need, not extra.
Tip #3 to Use Flexible Space: Expect it to Look a Little Disjointed
I am not a fan of visual clutter, and one of the hardest parts for me is how disjointed a flexible space can be that gets used for many purposes. I like order and patterns and neutral palette and a cohesive structure. So trying to keep all the different things stored and organized in a way that doesn’t make my brain feel like it is going bonkers every time I open the cabin door is a challenge! To be honest, my brain does cringe just a little sometimes when I walk in. But I’ve tried to embrace a “good enough” philosophy with it!
On the left of the cabin looks a lot like a guest room, with a bed, throw pillows, and attention for how it all balances. In the middle of the cabin, we have large, bulky items stored (off season and off size kids clothing totes, suitcases, gift wrapping supplies, and an infant car seat). And to the right inside the cabin, we have Gabe’s zone for storing youtube gear, his desk, and a tall shelf with extra curriculum and old paperwork records. The loft is currently set up like an additional spare bedroom. My sister and two of her friends visited us recently. So the loft was were one of them slept. Sometimes the loft is more of our storage spot, and it often gets overtaken with toys!
Since the cabin is a flexible space for a lot of different uses, it definitely doesn’t have a unified, cohesive aesthetic like I would prefer. But, oh well! Having the cabin set aside for flexibility means I can keep the rest of our house a bit more cohesive!
Tip #4 for How to Use Flexible Space: Organize It as Efficiently as Possible to Serve It’s Main Usage Functions
As I said above, our cabin serves four main purposes, and the space needs to be flexible to meet those uses. We have sleeping spaces permanently set up to facilitate the ease of using it as a guest bedroom. We also have shelves organized for storage so we can easily access the items we store in the cabin. I keep a chunk of the floor cleared of stuff, and the loft as open as possible for the kids to be able to play freely. And Gabe has storage space and a work zone for his youtube stuff, which doubles as his schooling location as well.
I don’t keep toys out in the cabin, even though it does serve as a play room part of the time. But I feel like if we kept toys out there, it would need to be on some of the shelves we use for long term storage. Therefore creating a need to find other long term storage for those items. Or it would cause all the surfaces of the cabin to become play zone, and I like to keep it as tidy as possible when it is not in use for one of our regular functions. This allows it to swing easily from one use to another without a lot of clean up needed.
Tip #5 for How to Use Flexible Space: Maintain It and Update It When Needed
I touched on this above, in that we have a standard for how the cabin looks when it is not in use (ie: toys cleaned up). So whenever the space is finished being used for it’s flexible purpose, the cabin goes back to a “neutral reset” state. This means it can easily be used for a different purpose at the drop of hat.
I think flexible spaces often don’t get used to their full potential when a mess from one purpose gets left. So, when we do our nightly clean up/reset with the kids, one of the tasks for the girls is to check the sleepout and bring any toys back into the house. And Gabe resets his work zone when he finishes with schooling or youtube days. We also make a point to make the bed immediately in the morning if it has been used during the night so that it looks neat and ready to go for any purpose. And also because one of the windows to our cabin is right where we come and go from our house. So I don’t want to look at a mess every time I leave or come home!
A Quick Tour of Our Detached Cabin:
The cabin sits to the side of our (very large) deck, which means it’s a quick access point to the cottage we live in, but it also is slightly separated.
The Sleeping Zones:
We have double french doors for an entrance into our cabin. To the left, when you step inside the cabin, is the “guest room” portion of the cabin. We have a very comfortable queen size bed. Under the bed, I keep some totes and large wooden trays to store a few things. I have a tote of off-season clothing for me, a try with baby gear not in use, and a tray with extra travel bags, backpacks, and slightly awkward shaped objects. I also have a bin of train tracks that I hide under there and pull out to our living room on rainy days when I need to keep Lazlo preoccupied with something for awhile.
There is a ladder leading up to the left, and on the left of the loft is a foam mattress that serves as a guest bed (or a quiet place to look at books if one of the girls needs to get away from her siblings). We have a couple shelves above the window up in the loft, which serve to store very infrequently used things. I just put a box of car seat accessories up there (extra pads, head rests, and user manuals). I also have some spare stationary supplies, and extra lightbulbs up there. Currently, an inflated peanut ball also gets stored up there, but as soon as the new baby is born, that will be deflated and put away!
The Bulky Items Storage Zone:
We have a closet of sorts that our landlords built into the middle of the cabin, directly in front of the french doors. I keep three totes of clothes for the kids here: size 1-2, size 3-4, and size 5+. I’ll adjust these sizes and get rid of some stuff to make more space as the kids continue to grow. We also keep our spare suitcases here – we’ve tried hard to have nesting suitcases as much as we can. I would prefer to have no luggage, but it doesn’t seem cost economical to always be buying new pieces of luggage to come back and forth between New Zealand and the USA when we travel.
Gabe has a tote of knife sharpening things. And I have a shelf devoted to greeting cards, string, ribbon, and gift bags. I’m trying to minimize this space, so the amount of stuff is shrinking as I use it up. I’ve switched more to a minimalist gift wrapping strategy. So I don’t want to keep a lot of gift wrapping options around… But it’s a work in progress!
On top of this closet space, we have the infant car seat, and some games. One of the shelves also has diapers and wipes and baby stuff for the new baby, since I’ll use the cabin as a postpartum recovery zone for part of our strategy to thrive in postpartum.
As a special mention for storing bulky items, we have an upright freezer next to the closet, so part of our storage usage for this flexible space is as an additional food storage spot!
Gabe’s Work/Study Zone:
To the right when you step into the sleepout is the work/study zone. Gabe’s fold up desk sits in front of the window, and we have a shelf (which also actually folds up, conveniently enough!) between the freezer and the wall, and it has more of Gabe’s youtube stuff. I also keep an electric kettle and some mugs here for when the space serves as a guest room.
Up above the window here is a shelf with a LOT of books and paperwork on it. I like to keep my old calendars (I don’t know why – I guess because they serve as a bit of a paper record of our lives, and I must be a bit sentimental about it!), and we have a bit of a personal family library on this shelf. I also keep my art supplies (which I don’t want the girls to get into!), along with sometimes bulk liquids like white vinegar or laundry detergent.
The Deck Outside the Cabin:
I can’t finish this post without mentioning – again – how terrific our deck is! It is huge. We have a small area that is permanently covered, which is where I have a laundry line. We also have a shoe rack here to keep boots. And then we have a shade sail that is up seasonally over a big portion of the deck. This means we have an outdoor dining space. Which also serves as a craft table. Or a spot for the kids to do a short workout video outside. And the kids use the deck for riding scooters and building forts.
I am so thankful for the deck and the flexible space of the detached cabin. Both make our small space feel larger and more customizable for our family.
I hope you enjoyed this tour of the cabin. It certainly isn’t the most perfect space, but it works for us! And I’m constantly trying to figure out how to make it work better and look better, so that gives me something to do!
Let me know in the comments below if you have any other ideas about how you would use the flexible space. And if you enjoyed seeing the tour of this portion of our house, be sure to check out my posts for the rest of the house: the kitchen, the common space, the kids’ room, Gabe’s and my room, and our bathroom.