Pandemic Quirk #5: Reimagining The Living Room

What does your living room communicate about how you live?

Now that home isn’t just the place we all come back to – it’s the place a lot of us spend our days during these COVID times – the supposed living room in our house is completely functionless for my personal daily endeavors. It has a couch and chairs, and we watch movies on the TV on weekends. But for most of the hours of the day that I could use it for the myriad things I’m motivated to do, I feel squelched rather than inspired by its layout.

I think it’s really important for the spaces you have to foster the living you want to do. It goes without saying, really. Our living room was fine in normal times, but there’s no hospitality right now. No dinner with friends, no kids coming over, no being together with anyone but family. For all of the hours of the day when I am home with my ambitions, how I’d love to revamp that space. It isn’t just mine, though. As a family there is always compromise, and often, compromise doesn’t really serve any one individual all that well.

I also believe that the spaces you have can dictate how you spend your time if you’re not aware of it. For instance, we recently turned the laundry room into a space for our older son, since the boys share a tiny bedroom. He’s made it an office with all things electronic. It is his only space all to himself in the house. (Wish I had one! Our bedroom fits only a bed, and there are no other spaces left to dole out.) He goes right in his office whenever he comes home from work or school. It’s his place to practice music, edit drone videos, learn new programs, dream up projects to build, and hone photos he’s taken. He’s quickly become used to utilizing the things that he has put in that room.

Lately, he has been assigned some thick books to read for school. Though he’s been a big reader all of his life and such assignments are easily within his grasp, his new “living” space hasn’t yet included quietness or reading. His space has taught his neuropathways what the brain does in there. I tell him not to sit in there to read; that his cell phone will look at him; his synthesizer will call to him; DIYs on YouTube will be a pull. I tell him instead to curl up with a cozy blanket on his bed and sink into his book without any competition from the other room’s neurohabits. Just one room away, and he’ll be able to completely lose himself 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Thankfully, it sank in. It didn’t hurt that we got him a cool little book light for Christmas. A new piece of quiet technology, and he’s stayed in bed in the mornings, flying through the pages.

I have a different “room” issue. Recently, I went from being a homeschooling mom to being my own self. Where the kitchen table was our school area and the living room was where we’d read and discuss together, our spaces are now available, but to people who are engaged in leisure activities – eating, reading, chatting. With the kids at school during the day, the last thing I want to do is hang out and eat bonbons in the living room. I’m ready to charge ahead with the things I’ve put on pause all of these years while momming.

Were I to redesign our living room for my own personal goals, the couch would be on a far wall waiting for guests someday and in its place would instead be a massive, high, white table. Each side of it would have a different purpose – one for each of my passions. The table would be so large that all of my family members would have plenty of space to join in with their mental and artistic interests once they come home. On the other end of the room would be an open area for doing YouTube workouts in these rainy months. Ah, a real living room where my body and brain are fed and can in turn feed others through income.

The one thing I can’t change easily in daily life is that everyone wants to talk to me the minute I dive into an endeavor that requires quiet thinking. I can’t blame them. I’ve always been there for them. But it never fails that whenever my mind buzzes at the excitement of airspace all to myself, someone walks in. Someone wants to converse, tell a story, explain a book, narrate their life. All good things. Just not conducive to the proper completion of any one thing.

That brings me to the high-tech item I would add to my dream living room: a clear, soundproof sphere that forms around my spacial area at the press of a button. A sphere that allows my family to come in and talk loudly without disturbing me. To engage in wild Wii games right beside my sphere without making any dent in my concentration. To throw stuffed animals for the dog, bouncing off the sphere without the unintended inclusion of me.

Ah, to independently co-live in the same living room without disrupting the thought processes of each live-er. A girl can dream.