Living in small spaces can be challenging. One room must often do the job of two or three. Yet, if the room looks like it works that hard the results can be nothing but a confusing, cluttered mess! A multi-functional dining room can be both efficient and attractive if the storage is well planned and executed.
The first step in multi-functional living design is to decide exactly what you need in the room. Do you need dining room office or study space for one or two persons? How often do you entertain? Is the dining room needed for eating daily? The answers to these questions will guide your planning process.
Next, you need to define the space. If you don't entertain that often and you have a dining table with a leaf, you may be able to have the dining table in the center of the room with one or two armoires in the corners, plus either a buffet table or china cabinet. The trick is that inside the armoires will be mini offices! You can have a computer stored in here as well as everything you need on shelves you install. Add a wastebasket kept under the desk top when the armoire is closed and your work space is there when you need it and hidden when you don't.
Fill the china cabinet with the dishes you use daily and/or for entertaining and place a nice centerpiece on the dining room table. This multi-functional dining room will look only like an eating space as long as you contain the work spaces within the armoires. If you're using two armoires, you may want to use a buffet table rather than a tall china cabinet to balance the height in the room, but any combination may work depending on how much space you have in your multi-functional dining room.
If you don't have much room and will need to use your dining table as a desk, you can still have a multi-functional dining room that doesn't look like an office. In this case, closed storage must hold all of your office supplies. You can even label your shelves and have stackable bins or other containers on the shelves to hold everything you need. Make sure to designate an area on a shelf to neatly hold the project you're working on when it's time to stop work for the day. This way you'll be able to just take the work out of the storage unit, place it on the table and start right where you left off.
