Ideas for Spare Rooms in Your Apartment

Are you lucky enough to have extra room in your apartment? If so, there are plenty of ways to make use of it. Read on for great spare room ideas.

Ready for guests
Turn your spare room into a guest room so you can host out-of-town friends and family. A daybed works as a sofa for you and sleeping quarters for your visitor. Add a night table and perhaps some space in the closet, and you’re ready for your mom or your German pen pal.

A home office
You can create an office workspace in your apartment at the kitchen table, so imagine what you could do with a whole room? A desk, chair, filing cabinet and bookshelf create a fully-equipped private workspace — an office away from the office. Bring in a comfortable seat to lounge on, and you can read or teleconference in comfort.

Your own library
If you are an avid reader who owns a lot of books, creating a library may be an excellent use for your apartment spare room. With today’s (mostly) easy-to-assemble modular shelves and room dividers, it’s simple to create wall-to-wall bookcases. Add cozy seating, a throw and a fireplace (or a nice space heater), and you have a quiet corner for a good read with a cup of your favorite beverage.

Play room
A place to play gives your apartment a feeling of creative freedom and confines toy chaos to a home of its own. To add play potential to your extra room, use modular frames to hold bins of toys and games. You also use this wide-open space for a train table, a doll house, bean bag chairs or a rocking horse.

Craft room
Do you like to bead, knit or scrapbook? Make your extra room an artistic oasis. Under-the-table rolling drawers hold art and craft materials and are easy to hide when not in use. You can store a taller version in the closet. A simple table or one that can store all of your supplies gives you plenty of dedicated work space.

At-home gym
Who needs a gym, when you have workout space at home? A television set with DVD player stands by for exercise discs, and exercise mats can stow away easily in a closet or roll up into an attractive basket. Add weights and other equipment to your regimen and store them in a handy shelves and bins unit.

Entertainment room
Maybe you’d like a place just to watch movies and television, or play video games. With an entertainment center, a small sofa, comfortable chairs or bean bags, you can invite friends for the game or spend uninterrupted hours with your Wii or PlayStation.

Do you need a roommate?
Of course, the most lucrative use for your extra room is to rent it out. Think hard about whether you’re really ready to share your home and deal with another person’s lifestyle and habits before you begin the process. You can find a roommate through word of mouth, a classified ad or via a roommate referral service. If you decide to take on a roommate, however, make sure to talk with your apartment manager and them onto the lease so you are covered should something happen.

Have you got too many rooms on your hands? The possible uses for an extra room are limited only by your imagination. See how much you can make your spare room multitask, and you could expand the living space of your apartment in ways you never thought possible.