Back when I was taking a million pictures of the finished half of our master bedroom, I also snapped a couple of what the other half of it (i.e. the part that was Abe’s nursery until very recently) looks like right now. But then I think I deleted those by accident. Sorry. Basically, you need to picture Abe’s old nursery:

….only with a desk from Ikea, a dog crate, and approximately 30 baskets of laundry in it instead of a crib and bookshelf and stuff.

It’s pretty handy to have a big space like that, tucked away behind a curtain, into which we can shove all that crap. So when we tried to come up with ideas for what to do with this space long term, I thought maybe it would be nice to turn it into a massive laundry room like the Duggars have. I mean, we have almost 19 kids, right? Very close.

But then I decided that maybe we should just get better about putting laundry away so that we could use the space for something else.

And the something else I have in mind is a combination office/craft area and sitting room/TV watching place.

I used to think that a “sitting area” in the master bedroom was just something people did when their master bedroom was too big, and they couldn’t think what else to do. But now that the kids are getting older and going to bed later, I can definitely see the benefits of a kid free zone upstairs with our very own TV. The kids can stay up late on weekends and do whatever they want downstairs, and we can….leave. Eventually we’d love to finish the basement so that there’s a kid hang out area down there, but we have no idea if/when that will happen.

I’m having a little trouble envisioning the ideal layout for this future room. I spent some time trying to find use a room designing tool thingy online, but then it frustrated me so I stopped. I think the most likely arrangement is a big desk area along one of the walls (I’d like a surface big enough for two people/chairs and big enough to work for either craft stuff or sticking a computer on) with a seating area kind of backing up to that and facing a TV on the opposite wall. But I also keep thinking there must be a better way than that. So we’ll see. Suggestions more than welcome!

Some office space inspiration pictures:

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…..looks like I want a gallery wall (as usual) and probably a natural wood desk of some sort. I’m still unsure whether I want to leave the curtain room divider up or not, but either way this space will need to flow well with the bedroom half of the room.

I’m also thinking about some kind of built in or built in looking storage.

Not in a rush for any of this, but I think I’ll start casually keeping an eye out for pieces that would work in here. In the meantime, I’ll enjoy my giant laundry storage area while it lasts.

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