There are no rules about how to use your dining room. It is your space, and you need to trust your own instincts about how it can best be put to use for your family. Depending on the size and lighting, it could potentially be a great place for homework, meetings, and even a small home office. Even if you don't technically “work” from home, everyone needs a place for sorting through bills and managing paperwork. Your dining room could very well serve this function. Keep in mind, however, that you'll want to be able to conceal stacks of papers and bills so that meals can be peaceful.

As you think about how you can best use your dining space, you might want to keep the following questions in mind:

• What will the primary use of this room be? (Casual dining with your family? Formal dining with friends, family, and/or business associates? Storage? Will this room double as a place for you to do work or your kids to do homework?)

• How often will you use the dining area for dining? (Nightly, weekly, monthly, once a year? Only for holidays?)

• How often will the dining area be used for activities other than dining?

• How many people will you typically need to accommodate? While you may have all of your relatives over each year for Thanksgiving dinner, for example, during the rest of the year, will you typically only have four or six people dining in this room?

After you've assessed your needs for this space, you'll be better prepared to come up with a plan for using it. If you are going to use it for homework or a home office, consider investing in baskets, a filing cabinet, or some other system that can serve as a paper sorter. If your dining room will double as a workspace, keep in mind that it will probably attract massive amounts of paper, so you'll want to be prepared to make quick decisions about how to store (and when to recycle) your paper before it grows from stacks into mounds into mountains.