To Duvet or Not to Duvet.

I have a small and unimportant quandary.

So I’m a minimalist. I don’t actually enjoy using the term that much because it is ironically freighted with so much baggage as of late, but that is what I am. I am more interested in not owning much than I am in the austere aesthetic, though I do kind of like the aesthetic.

Over the course of the quarantine I have put more effort into making a comfortable home than I would have otherwise. So I probably do have more stuff in my apartment than I would otherwise and lately I have been feeling weird about it. So I have been thinking about going through everything again and doing a purge. So that is Data Point 1.

Here is Data Point 2: During quarantine I had to turn my guest bedroom into my home office and though it still has a bed in it, it isn’t really arranged properly to function as a guest bedroom because it primarily functions as an office and a cat napping area right now.

Now on to Data Point 3: Within the next few months I will be transitioning back to in-person work (though I don’t know exactly when that will happen). I am also beginning to hear from (fully vaccinated) friends and family who want to come out and stay with me, which is lovely and also something I had hoped would start to happen. After all, I live on the central coast of California and have an extra bedroom (because this two bedroom apartment is actually the smallest and cheapest place I could find. That’s a long story and not important right now).

So add all of that up and it means I have to start transitioning my guest bedroom back into a guest bedroom. Since I’d only lived here about five months prior to the pandemic and because the “extra’ bedroom was the last thing I was worried about furnishing, it was never really outfitted properly and was not a particularly pleasant room to be in, though people had slept in it.

Now I am beginning to think about how to make a pleasant and welcoming space for guests to stay in and almost without exception these will be people who are NOT minimalists and who — in some cases — actually think I’m kind of crazy for living the way that I do.

I’d like to provide a pleasant experience for people who come see me, because quarantine has left me feeling terribly lonely and there is little I’d like more than to see people, but, being a minimalist, I really bristle at the idea of buying a whole bunch of stuff I’m not going to use 90% of the time to cram into a room that I don’t use most of the time. I’m staring down the barrel of having to buy extra towels and bedding and probably some bins to organize the towels and the bedding and I need some more lamps (the light in the guest room kinda sucks if the sun isn’t out) and probably a chair and a rug and … other stuff? What goes in a guest room? I’ve never really had to equip one before. 

It feels like my natural inclination to make a bedroom look like a monk’s cell (that’s basically what my own bedroom is like) is probably not what a normal person would think of as pleasant after they had to take a weekend off work and make a long drive to come and visit me.

Surely there is a middle path here that I can find a way to navigate, but I simply have not yet found a way to navigate it. Probably this is what Pinterest is for, right? 

The other thing that bugs me about all this is that at least while the room has been my workspace, I was USING IT. Once I turn it back into a guest room, I will barely be using it most of the time. I would love to give it some kind of hybrid function, but I already have a dining room talke (where I am typing this right now) and a small desk in my living room where I also sometimes write. So I don’t need it to be a home office after Covid. I don’t have any other space-requiring hobbies. I don’t secretly make jewelry or anything, so I don’t know what hybrid function I would try to jam in there.

I also kind of hate how much time I am going to have to spend thinking about all of this. I’m going to end up saying things to myself like, “Maybe I should have a backup duvet …” and that is just going to make me go insane.

Look, I said at the top that this was a SMALL and UNIMPORTANT quandary. At least you know I am being honest with you.

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