Form vs. Function

Welcome to another Metamorphosis Monday hosted by Between Naps on the Porch. It has been so fun to participate and see so many before and afters. Thank you Susan!

When it came to decor, it used to be form over function for me. Who cared if something had no function as long as it served my aesthetic need? :) I didn't even use baby gates as I thought they were ugly. I taught our children to crawl backwards down the stairs as soon as they could crawl so that I didn't have to deal with those ugly gates.

However, with the chaos of family life, I am realizing I need function a little more than form. As our family grows up, I am constantly thinking of how to make our house function for us. A couple of years ago, we switched our living and dining rooms. It worked better for us to have a large dining room to host family and other social functions. At the same time, it was better for us to have a smaller living room where we could tuck the (ugly) piano on one side of the wall where it was not very visible to people as they walk into our home. I also had an office armoire in the living room that housed my computer. That armoire moved last year into the study. It was bringing too much clutter from all my paperwork, and I was also not doing a good job at closing up the armoire after I was finished for the day.

While the living room was functional with the piano in there, I realized it could be even more functional. We do a lot of reading in that room. The sofa is so comfortable, we can nap in there too. Here is the before of the living room:

I decided while it was nice to have a clean, uncluttered living room, it might be better served with bringing up the bookcase from the basement "library". No one was using the bookshelves down there. All the books were coming upstairs and being left everywhere. My dilemma was that bookcases, when used for the sole purpose of housing books, can look quite cluttered. I am trying to declutter, and also trying to lighten up the house. The bookcase we have is dark, and not necessarily the style I would have chosen. But, it had been given to us years ago, is a very high quality piece, and I have always been a believer of using what I have. Also, I had to think of function. Here is what it looks like now:

To accessorize the top of the bookcases, I added my prints to the top of the bookcases to visually lengthen them.

I want to lighten the look of this room for the summer. My plans for this room include slip covering the side chairs, replacing the drapes, and replacing the 3 prints on top of the bookcases. I am planning on also covering some of the paperback books with white paper. I know. What a time consuming task, but I do like that clean look.

I know that having all these books in this room will take more work to keep clean, but seeing this (below) makes it worthwhile when I know this room is being used for its intended purpose.

Hopefully, after I do some of my projects as planned, I may end up liking the look of the living room "library". Who knows, maybe I'll even go and paint the bookcases black to emulate this look:

Traditional Home via Porchlight Interiors