NAMING THE ROOMS IN YOUR HOME

Do you name the rooms in your house? Oh sure, there are living rooms, kitchens, Susie's room, etc. And of course we name rooms based on how we use them like the"sewing room", "craft room" etc. But what about thinking of them a bit differently? Or naming them like they do in the White House like "The Lincoln Room"?

http://rogerjnorton.com/Lincoln54.html

And speaking of the Lincoln Room, did you know that you can reserve the Lincoln Room and stay overnight in there? For $400 a night you can stay at the White House! Click on "The Lincoln Room" above to go to the reservation site. It states that they want the average American to have access to the White House. I had not heard of this before and thought it was worth passing on! Let me know if you have ever stayed there! I just might start saving my money! And what a great gift for the person who has everything?

And now that you are TOTALLY distracted... back to the room naming: I first  thought about this many years ago when friends of ours moved down south and they insisted they didn't have a living room, they had a "den". It was the biggest living space in their house so I insisted that it was "really" the living room. OUR "den" was a smaller room that had built in bookshelves and a desk. But "no", they insisted it was a DEN. They "didn't HAVE a living room". And now we have "great rooms"and "man caves". Where did MAN CAVES come from anyway?

Mancave of the year 2012

There is even an official Man Cave Site. 

Back to OUR house again: Then we moved into this mansion that had 49 rooms! Whoa! The main part of the house, the part we DON'T live in, had rooms that we had not had before. There was a butler's pantry, a library, a ballroom, a billiard room, greenhouse, a servant's wing, a courtyard, a linen room, and more.

OUR private living space had a couple of rooms that didn't fall into any "normal" category. So we had to come up with some names. We had the "normal" living/dining room, kitchen, and even a family room, etc. But there was a little space off the living room where we decided to put our extra  dining table and chairs, a smaller sofa and our second, smaller TV. When we first moved in, we would often eat our breakfast there so we could watch the morning news while we ate. So I started calling it the "breakfast room".

Part of the breakfast room.

It didn't catch on. No one else in the family called it that. They would ask, "what breakfast room"? THAT was frustrating! So I started calling it, "the little TV room" for LACK of a name. They STILL get confused and we've lived here 23 years!!

Me: I'll be in the little TV room.
Family Member: Where is that?

Then we have another room which is really a HUGE "closet" with a beautiful built in dresser, hardwood floors, a window, and two large shelves just under the ceiling. Since we have another big walk-in closet, and this room was so big, we decided to use THIS room for other things. Over the years it has been an office space, a craft room, and storage room.

The bookshelves

Built-in dresser

Cute little window

Right now, along with storage it is holding all of our books on the shelves and I might turn it into a Library. I even bought an antique library ladder for the room.

 My grandson likes to play in there and since there is not a direct heat source in there, if we keep it closed in the winter, it can get pretty cold. So my grandson's name for this room is, "the cold room".

There is another big room just off the laundry room with big beautiful windows that I have turned into the space where I keep my "finds" for our upcoming occasional sales. I have named this room my "Hob Nobber" room. Now THAT is a room that everyone calls by its "correct name".  Woot Woot!!

THE HOB NOBBER ROOM

We have a big entry...once you get up the long stairs just inside the door. My husband insists on calling it the foyer ( pronounced foy-yay he says ). He just loves saying that word! As our 4 year old grandson, Charlie, would say, "Grampa is so funny!"

AN OUTDATED PHOTO OF PART OF THE "FOY-YAY", NOW PAINTED WHITE

 Since our children have moved out, our grandchildren have "named" our extra bedrooms. Our daughter's former room with the glow in the dark stars on the ceiling, complete with constellations, is the "Star Room". Grandson, Charlie, loves sleeping in there. The other bedroom is just "the girls room" because it was turned into a kind of girly-girl room with twin beds for the granddaughters.

Just outside our private living space, and inside the main house, is the linen room where the maids would keep the linens. With plenty of built in cabinet space and a large folding counter it looked perfect for our "Wrapping Room". While we don't use the space in the main house as our own, we have kind of adopted this little room at Christmas time.We store all of our wrapping paper, bows, ribbons, etc.in the cupboards  and during the month of December we use this counter to wrap all of our presents. It's perfect! We LOVE having a "wrapping room"! You'll have to wait to see the wrapping room in a future post about the Plummer House.

So now I'm thinking of coming up with some creative names for the rooms that don't have names yet. How fun would it be to say you have a conservatory? You could turn your "patio" into a "courtyard". Since my linen closet is a walk-in room with a dresser, I now have a "linen ROOM". Instead of an entry you can have a "foy-yay". You just might think differently about your home with some creative naming! One thing is for sure though. We are NOT having a "man cave"!

I'd love to hear if YOU have some fun names for the rooms in your home! I need some ideas!

And if you're confused about why I keep mentioning, "the big house", "the main house", "the maids linen room", etc. check out this post for a brief explanation.

I'm joining Tuesdays At Our Home party at Our Home Away From Home