I have been busy designing bedrooms for the month of May and there was a design dilemma that repeatedly came up. I thought it was an excellent question that many of you probably have, so I’m addressing it here.
Do you design a room for every purpose that it will possibly need to fill?
Or more specifically – If I have a yeshivah bachur that comes home once every 6 weeks for Shabbos, or once a year from America for the summer, do I keep him in mind when making decisions about the room?
Many of us have this question in one form or another. Do you design the room for its use 95% of the time or should I accommodate all potential uses as well.
The answer is: you design the room for what it’s used for 95% of the time. I’ll explain why… and I’m not forgetting about your son in yeshiva, or your parents that visit once a year from abroad and use the room.
If you try to accommodate a little bit of everything, in the end you get nothing.
Our rooms here in Eretz Yisrael are small and we don’t have so many rooms. I believe that each room should be maximized for the people who live in them. Why should a child who lives in your home 24/7 have less space in their closet or a smaller desk to do homework, to make room for a bed that is used once every 6 weeks! Give them everything they need so that they will enjoy living at home while they’re still home 😉
You design a room for its primary use. Let the people living in your home have lots of space for their belongings, lots of space to play and lots of space to live.
So then what do you do when your yeshiva bachur comes home or your guests come from America to use the room? So for those weeks you make changes. The little kids move out of their beds and sleep on mattresses to accommodate the bigger kids who came home from yeshiva. You clear out another closet for the extra clothes. You can make do with a bit of disorganization over a Shabbos or a bein hazmanim or a visit by a parent and move people around and do things a bit differently on those occasions.
But why should everyone live under crowded conditions all year long for that empty bed waiting to be used a few times a year?
The bottom line is – You design a room for its use 95% of the time. If you try to accommodate every possible need that the room might fill one day, you won’t design the room correctly for the purpose it needs to serve now.
