Some families call it a family room, while others call it their living space, but the verdict is simple: there’s a room in every home where the entire family can relax and spend their leisure together. Most of the time, it’s not even a separate room, but an informal corner of the house where the television is constantly blaring, the couches are well-used and the carpet is tattered. This is the room where all members of the family are most comfortable together.
The family room is often the most informal room in the entire house; big or small, it usually has everything needed for all the members of the family to enjoy their leisure. As a rule, family rooms are often adjacent to the kitchen or the dining room, or they open up to the backyard or a garden. Family rooms are mostly available in houses rather than in apartments, but you don’t need a lot of space in your home to make a comfortable family space for your family.
There are many ways that you can use the family room in your house, and some of them have been described below.
- The Television Room
If you have only one television in your house, that television should ideally be in the family room. You might have smaller television sets in the other rooms of your house, but the one in the family rooms are always the biggest. This is the TV that is usually connected to the home theater, the DVD player, the PlayStation or the Xbox; the biggest television in the house is where the entire family sits together to watch a movie or a show.
As the primary entertainment for most modern families is the television, this is what the family room is usually used for. If you want to supervise what your children watch on television, it is better if they do all their viewing in the family room.
- The Homework Room
Most children do their homework at the dining table or the kitchen when they can be supervised by a parent or an older sibling. Although, if you don’t want any kind of clutter in the dining space or if you don’t have a big enough dining table, the family room is the perfect place for the kids to complete their homework.
This can go on for years, even when the kids are older and don’t need help with their homework. Completing their homework in the family room can be a group activity; they can continue with their studies while the adults read or listen to music. However, as they grow up and their homework gets complicated, your children would probably prefer to study in their own bedrooms instead of in the family room.
- The Game Room
Whether your family is interested in board games or computer games, the family room can be the perfect place for you to play. All you need is a couch, a few chairs, and a table, and the whole family can spend a few glorious hours playing together.
If you like computer games or playing on the PlayStation/Xbox, you can connect them with your television and get multiple controllers for the whole family. The family room is also usually perfect for playing board games with your family on a rainy day or on your days off.
- The Library
Not all families can afford to have a separate library in their home, but you can arrange a bookshelf in the family room. All you need is a large store-bought bookcase that can hold your collection or to construct a wall-to-wall bookcase at one side of the family room. Since family rooms already have couches and lamps, you won’t need anything else to turn this room into your library except books.
If no one in the house is a reader or if you don’t have enough books in your collection, you can still dedicate a corner of the family room to make a reading corner for your young children. Reading corners for children are easy to make if you want your kids to start reading at an early age; all you need to do is to buy or make a small bookcase, get a comfortable armchair for them and provide appropriate natural and artificial light in that area.
- The Craft Room
If you have a crafting hobby, or if you run a crafting business, you might need a separate crafting room in your house. However, if you don’t have a spare room for all your crafting supplies and instruments, the family room can also be used as your temporary craft room.
You can arrange for a separate crafting table for your work in the family room, one that will hold your sewing and crafting machines, your supplies, and instruments, fabric and materials, etc. However, if you don’t have space for a table, all you need is a moveable storage unit where you can keep all your supplies. You can take this storage unit anywhere with you, and work on the couch or an armchair in the family room.
- The Play Room
The family room can very easily be turned into a playroom for your kids if you want your children to always stay close to you. They can play in the family room with all their toys while you take care of the cooking, cleaning, dusting, and laundry.
Of course, your family room is going to be quite a mess if your children use it as their playroom, but you can easily avoid so by allocating a corner or aside for them. If you can build a cabinet for your kids to put all their toys in, they can clean up after themselves after they are done playing. Besides, both family rooms and playrooms are supposed to be messy and disorganized.
- The Work Room
If you regularly bring work home, you’ll probably need a home office or a workroom in your house. In the absence of such a spacious room, the family room could do. You can set up a small desk in the family room to hold your laptop and your paperwork, or you could do your office work while sitting on the couch.
These days, you don’t need an elaborate setup for your computers or laptops. A slim and modern desk will do the work if you only need a laptop to work. Besides, the advantages of laptops are that you can work on it while sitting on a laptop or lying on a bed.
This is the specialty of family rooms: you can use it any way you want to. A family room can be the entertainment room, the playroom, the workroom or the fun room, or simply someplace for you to relax and take a nap. Your family room is for your family to spend some quality time with each other, which is one of the best ways to spend your leisure moments.