badly drawn sketches of an un-loved bedroom

Doesn't the name of this post sound like a great, pretentious title for a best-selling memoir? Badly Drawn Sketches of an Un-Loved Bedroom could totally be the new A Million Little Pieces. Haha, anyway ... several months ago I posted this picture of our master bedroom closet. I had worked hard to get the space ridiculously organized, and I was proud of it! Lest you think all of our closets look like this, however, allow me to show you this ...

Yikes! That is the coat closet, and it is much too full of junk to make room for, you know, coats. BTW, in case anyone is wondering why the sofa is covered in blankets, it's because Jemima was a bit pukey (she's fine now!) when I took this picture, so I'd covered it up to ensure that she didn't leave any vomit-colored spots on our crisp white sofa. Hope you aren't eating as you read this!

Let's zoom in on the more problematic section of the closet, shall we? Here's what we have here:

• camera equipment
• a grill/smoker
• camping tables
• suitcase stuffed full of books (don't ask)
• weights
• patio rug
• violin
• scarves
• box full of odds and ends that we need to return to people. If we've borrowed a book or DVD from you and haven't given it back yet, chances are it's in that black and white box!

It feels a little funny calling a picture that looks like a second grader drew it my "ideal" anything, but here is how the coat closet would ideally end up looking. The smoker and the patio rug stay, as well as the boxes on the top shelf, but now we have room for scarves, coats, shelves for the camera equipment, as well as another one of those handy shoe-holders that you see in the master bedroom closet up there. We always end up with a big pile of shoes downstairs anyway, so we might as well have a place to put them! 

Where will we put the suitcase o' books, the weights, and the violin, you ask? Well, that brings me to my point:

This is our guest bedroom, and while it's a lovely place to host our guests, it's not very practical for daily use. Back when we lived in a one-bedroom apartment, I daydreamed of having an extra bedroom. I had visions of us using the extra space as a place to read, watch movies and drink our coffee. When I heard other people say they never set foot in their guest bedroom I thought "that would never happen to us!" But, sure enough, we hardly ever set foot in there. Which is a shame, because it's a nice, sunny room, and we are letting a large portion of our square footage go unappreciated!

Here is a (very) rough sketch of the current layout.

 And here are four options I've come up with to allow us to not only get more use out of this room, but also allow us to bring in new furniture (such as bookshelves, desks and entertainment centers) giving us new places to store a lot of that coat closet clutter.

A) The main thing we need in this guest bedroom is a place to store our books. This layout includes bookshelves, as well as a little "home office" area, which would be nice, but realistically I'm not sure we'd actually use it that often. But maybe we would? Do you any of you have home offices, and if so, do you actually use them?

B) The only big change in this layout is that we'd swap the giant nightstand for a sitting area. Hopefully that (might?) entice us to spend more time in this room. But something tells me we'll still just go straight to the downstairs sofa when we want to chill. Plus, it doesn't give us any furniture that could be used to store things like the violin and the weights.

C) This one is the least guest-friendly, as it would involve getting rid of the bed all together and having our guests sleep on a pull-out sofa, but it would allow us to bring in an entertainment center, which could mean a second TV and a place for the video game stuff to stay out, as well as bookshelves. It would more or less become a family room, and I'm pretty sure we would actually use a room like this on a regular basis.

D) This one is the easiest of all the options, because it involves a minimal amount of furniture buying/selling, and still gives us that family room/game room feeling. For this option we would push the bed against the wall, line it with oversized pillows, and bring in an entertainment center and bookshelves. This would leave us with a sofa-ish place to hang out, but still provide a "real" bed for guests. This comes with one big problem, though ... is it okay to use a double/full bed as a daybed? I tried to Google this to see if it's "allowed" or not, but I couldn't find anything! I know traditionally daybeds are twin beds, so is it a huge no-no to make a double bed into a daybed? Someone tell me, because I don't know! 

Which option do you like best? Do you have a guest bedroom, and if so, do you ever use it, and what do you use it for?