Multipurpose rooms

Why is this window shorter than the others on the first floor of this old home? Find out in this week’s Perfectly Imperfect column! (Photo provided by Amy Shankland)

I have to chuckle quietly to myself when I tour some people’s houses. When they show me their craft room, office, exercise room, and/or guest room, I think of our Old Town Noblesville Victorian worker’s cottage. Old houses often don’t have rooms for separate purposes like these. Instead, we have what I fondly call “multipurpose rooms.”

When you enter our home through one of our two front doors, the first thing you’ll see is my office/guest room/music/cat room – with the proper term really being “parlor.” My desk is in one corner, with our piano against an angled wall to its right. Mama Kitty, being an old girl, sleeps, eats, and uses the litter box in this room.

We have beautiful double swinging doors to separate this room from the family/living room, which is why the parlor is also our guest room. It turns into the guest room when we inflate the queen-sized air mattress!

You may have noticed I said, “one of our two front doors.” Our second door, which is rarely opened, leads into the family room. If you’re curious about the reason for this, it’s because people didn’t have funeral homes back in the day. So, one door led into the front room where you could view the casket when a family member or friend died, and the other led into the rest of the house. We even have a shorter window in our parlor where someone was probably … well … I’ll let your imagination take over.

After you go through the family room, you enter our dining/craft/game room. I don’t exactly do crafts, but this is often where I’ll do little sewing projects. The dining room also hosts get-togethers with family and friends where we’ll eat, then play cards or board games.

Off the dining room is the kitchen/laundry folding/gift wrapping room. The heart of the kitchen is our island, where I spend a great deal of my time. The island is perfect for folding laundry (the laundry/mud room is nearby) and dozens of other tasks.

Those who have read my column for years know that I do some of my exercises at home since I’m not a gym person. I do these in multiple spaces. I start out by doing stretches using our bottom stairs.

Next, I’ll go to the dining room for squats and other tough stuff. Then I’ll go to the office/guest (oh, you know the rest by now) room for some light weightlifting, since the weights are in that room’s closet. Oh … our closets are also multipurpose … but that’s a whole other column.

After weightlifting, it’s time to go to our upstairs hallway for some floor exercises. I must go there because our second floor is carpeted – our first floor has hardwood floors. Finally, I finish up the exercises in my bedroom.

If I can’t hoop dance outside or at First Christian Church – thank you, First Christian, for loaning us your gathering space in cold weather – then I must move some furniture out of the way to do it in our family/living room.

Would I change anything? After being here for 26 years, absolutely not. We love our old home and plan on staying here for at least another decade or two. I’ll continue to enjoy our multipurpose rooms/spaces and share them with those I love. After all, the more uses for a room, the more memories!

Amy Shankland is a writer and fundraising professional living in Noblesville with her husband John, two sons, two dogs, and a cat. You can reach her via email at amys@greenavenue.info.