10 Rooms in Your Home That Just Collect Dust and How to Fix Them

Do you have any rooms in your home that you never use, or only rarely get used? There’s a good chance you do. According to research from the University of California, the average family spends 68% of their time in just ten percent of their home, with 44% of their time spent in one room alone!

Maybe you’re not the average family, but it’s still worth asking yourself if the size of your home, and thereby the cost, is worth it compared to the level of usage you’re getting out of the space.

Even if you plan to stay in your current home, it’s still worth considering whether the size of your house is unnecessarily large. More rooms lead to more cleaning and maintenance—even if you’re not using those rooms. And maybe you just feel like there’s too much stuff to maintain or too much clutter in every room.

A bigger house isn’t always better, and downsides do exist. While the downsides of a smaller house include less space for storage, less room for guests, and fewer options for how to use the space in your home, those aren’t bad problems to have because they force you to be more intentional.

The downsides of a larger house, on the other hand, are all related to having more than you can handle. They include more maintenance, higher utility costs, more cleaning, higher taxes, and even bigger furnishing costs.

Whether you’re already thinking about downsizing or just curious, reading through the list below of commonly underutilized rooms may get you thinking about how well you’re using your current space and what you can do about it.

Rooms in Your Home That Might Be Wasting Space

Here is a list of rooms that might be wasting space if they’re not being fully utilized:

Formal dining room

Most homes these days still come with a dining room, but you don’t see them being used nearly as often as the kitchen table. This is especially true if you have a kitchen island with bar stools—that’s where most people end up eating 90% of their meals anyway.

Formal living room

Another room that the old style homes have that is less common these days is a formal living room in addition to a more casual family room or den. I like the idea of this space—one room to entertain guests and another to make memories with your kids, but I’ve found most people just opt for an open concept these days with one big space that doesn’t have to be formal or informal.

Spare bedroom

I see a spare bedroom as an opportunity cost that few people can afford these days. If you have the space, it’s nice to have a room that can be used as a nursery, guest room, or future bedroom for a child. But to dedicate an entire room to house just for the possibility of the occasional guest, and to have that room sit empty for most of the year seems like a huge waste of space. Wouldn’t it be better to use that real estate for something you would regularly use.

Guest bathroom

Another common design decision is to dedicate an entire bathroom for guests to use when they stay in your home. Again, I see this as something that only makes sense if you’re regularly hosting people in your home. Otherwise, there’s a lot of upside to having a smaller home and adding a couple of other less expensive features that make everyone’s daily life more enjoyable.

Sunroom

Our last house had a sunroom that got some serious direct sunlight in the afternoon. We loved it, and my wife and I spent time there every Sunday afternoon after church. But truthfully, that was about the only time we went into that room as it was a bit disconnected from the rest of the home.

Mud room

Of all the “rooms” in the house, this is one I saw as a “nice to have” but certainly not a “need to have.” It’s really nice to have a place to take off your shoes and dump your bags when walking into the house. But depending on your exterior home layout, this isn’t always a very convenient addition. In our case, our mud room was in the basement of our old home, which meant a long walk up the stairs to actually enter the main floor of the home.

Basement

With the rise of unfinished basement spaces to a level now that is common in most homes built today, we’re now seeing a whole extra level to the house that in many cases goes completely unused. Sure, it’s nice to have a cool, dry place to store things that aren’t needed every day, but a basement has the possibility of being so much more. Unfortunately, many families I know allow this storage room to become a disorganized mess.

Attic

When I was growing up, the one room in our house that me and my siblings knew we weren’t allowed to go into was the attic. It was dark, unfinished, contained a rickity ladder to get up there, and I think was even moldy. I can’t imagine going through the effort to get up there and grabbing whatever it is we needed, but there was a lot of stuff up there.

Front Hallway or Large Entryway

Maybe it’s because we had little ones in our lives for the past several years, but having a large entryway is at the very bottom of my priority list. I’d love to have a small entryway and have that space be used for something else. But as it was, we had to make sure this floor remained clutter free by parking ourselves in another room when we came inside. That means an unused room that has to be kept clean—one of the worst uses of space.

Upstairs Landing

Another part of the house that takes up precious square footage is the upstairs landing. I’m sure there’s a good reason for needing this space for bathrooms, showers, and more bedrooms, but I can’t help but see it as wasted space. In fact, I think the best use of this space would be to turn it into a large storage closet that could be easily accessed from all the rooms upstairs.

Conclusion: Downsizing Isn’t for Everyone

As someone who has taken steps to simplify nearly every other area of my life, I’ve been giving a lot of thought lately to the size of the home we live in. I’m naturally frugal, so I don’t think I’m in danger of wasting money, but it does seem like our family has been accumulating more stuff and creating more rooms that are rarely used.

Is downsizing right for everyone? Certainly not if you don’t want to. But I do think many people assume they need a lot more space than they actually do because of the way the average American home size has been growing over the last several decades. It’s interesting to ask yourself what your ideal home size would be and why.