{Inspiration} Is it a dining room? A playroom? An office?

Jim and I have desks upstairs, and he does an awful lot of work on his, but I feel too far removed from the action in the home if I’m upstairs. There’s not a lot for Molly to do up there {it’s just one room – all of our bedrooms and living space are downstairs} so I would never get *anything* done during the day anyway.

I got a gorgeous secretary as a gift from my mom several years ago and it’s in our family room. I use that to house my stationery, charge my computer and keep my piles of papers. {I won’t even pretend that I don’t have piles…} BUT it’s not very work friendly because I can’t spread everything out. When I grade papers, I have to have two stacks, plus space to work and a place for my coffee. When I’m working on Sweet Birdie’s Nest stuff, I often have my calendar and notebook out.

I finally migrated to the dining room table, so it often looks like this:

So imagine my frustration at having three – yes, three! – workspaces. I’ve been scouring the internet for inspiration and came across this feature at bhg.com. While the dining room in the feature is larger than mine, some of the ideas are definitely applicable. I have a huntboard and a china cabinet that both have plenty of drawers and cabinet space. I feel that if I can repurpose one drawer or cabinet, I can keep all of the necessary items at hand.

So now I’m totally inspired to make my dining room work for me! It’s the only eating space we have {the couch + tv trays don’t count, right?!}, so I’ve got to be able to quickly put things away and I’d like to be able to access my teacher’s manuals and school folders AND my SBN ideas and notebook easily. This is definitely do-able, it will just take some purging, rearranging and reorganizing. I’ll be sure to keep you posted and let you know how I make this space work for me!