A Room with a View to Rue

Nope. Not my house. Not my mess.

I have a house.

I have a house with rooms.

My house has the usual rooms: bed, bath, living. My house has a kitchen (which for some reason is not called a kitchenroom).

And then there is that other room.

In my house that other room is called the "Flex Room." This is what the architect named it on the original plans, and my imagination couldn't come up with anything snappier. So the Flex Room it is.

The Flex Room is a room in a space that has no obvious purpose. It doesn't qualify as a bedroom because it doesn't have a closet. Nor is there a door to the hallway. It's not a large room, but it does have a window, a door to the garage and a door to the outside.

I've filled the Flex Room with some shelving units. And I've put in a small table, which perfectly abuts a second, drop-leaf table. The table-on-table provides lots of room for doing projects or wrapping gifts. It's a place to set groceries when I come home from the store. It's doubled as a dining table for serving guests who couldn't make it upstairs. It's turned out to be a great little room.

But the room is also a void.

And you know how trouble likes a void . . .

• Home from the garage sale, where does all that junk go that I didn't know I needed?
• What to do with the old VHS player? The retired computer? The outdated cables?
• Where to stow that stuff hauled inside quick-like, out of the rain?
• A great place for the Goodwill donations while I'm collecting a "few more" things.
  
• Just for now, I say to myself about the empty jars, discarded magazines, perfectly serviceable empty boxes, the little container of doo-dads to sort.

I've been reviewing my to-do list which, not to sound smug or anything, is actually looking shorter these days. On the other hand, there's that Flex Room, which is certainly looking, uh, fuller these days. To-do List, Flex Room—those crazy kids: Think there might be an inverse relationship going on?

Guess how I'm spending the rest of my day . . .

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