A Bare Room

Setting aside a room for nothing sounds absurd but I learned this concept for quite some years. Until recently I had a chance to realize this.  Actually after a prolonged struggle for more than half an year.

I was acquainted with this concept from a book written by Ms. Kinokuniya. She suggested a bare room could be for multi-purposes such as studying room, playroom, visitor room no matter for relatives or friends of her kids, laundry drying room when it's raining, even as an "isolation room" when one of the family members is suffered from infectious disease.  She doesn't mean that the bare room should be empty but should only be "looked" empty.  There could be furniture for storage such as closet but all clutters should be shielded from viewing.

Incidentally, I have a room of similar setting, with a wardrobe inside.  It used to be as visitor room and now the visitors finally left. After almost half a month of using this room, I could not stop myself promoting this concept.  What did I do with this room?

1. I put almost all toys into the wardrobe, in a tidy manner so that I can fetch a specific toy in a minute. I labelled them all and they were all stored upright, or in the drawers. It's actually a variation of Marie Kondo's style!  After that, my toddler loves to ask mommy, the only authorized toy library staff, to borrow one toy at a time to play with, then returns the toy and puts it back to the original position with mommy.

2. When playing with wooden balls of pool-ball size, we love to close the door of the bare room and make full use of the floor.  We needed not worry we have to find the balls under any furniture and the sound of ball bombardment, just made me feel like we were as participants on a pool table.

3. I could continue my decluttering process one bite at a time inside the bare room, with no distraction.  If I couldn't finish the one bite in one day, I might continue on the next day without any disruption.  I just put another bite into the room as my task to be completed for tomorrow. 

4. I also made use of the room for ironing and for laminating teaching materials for a toddler.  Using iron is always dangerous if you have a toddler around.  

5. Any family member, when s/he needs to talk over phone for important matter, can always go into this bare room.

6. When I need a quiet moment, I can just go inside this bare room, close the door.  Surely family can interrupt by knocking the door but with the door, your chance of being interrupted would greatly be reduced.  This is really a great escape from a hectic life, especially the room is free of clutter visually, which can give you peace.

Why not give a try if you can afford? I will update you when I find more ways to use this bare room.

Figure: I was advised to turn the bare room into a study room and tempted to put a hi-tech height adjustable desk / standing desk inside the room.  Thank God I didn't follow the advice.  I love this setting much more as an ironing board could be folded and is far more space saving!