During my bachelor life, especially in the years when I spent most of my life outside, trying to live, learn and earn, I rarely used to worry about how my place of residence should look like. I have even said "I don't want to invest much in my apartment because anyway, I will only come here to sleep." As I learnt more, became more mature, and my life goals started materializing, I started valuing my place of residence, my home, more. The COVID-19 induced pandemic in 2020 accelerated this interest in setting a nice abode. I was still a bachelor when I started thinking about setting up my living room in a manner that I can host people in it, and bring people to develop social relationships at my own home.
But soon, my bachelor pad started becoming restless as my housemates started to realize the futility of living in Bangalore when the offices are closed. Soon, we all departed from Bangalore, to go and stay at our parents' places. I loved it at first. Living with my parents after a decade, my life was suddenly filled with serotonin that it was deprived of for such a long time. And the living room at my home was all set up; a traditional sofa set, with carpet decorating the floor, a television set and a sound system which would certainly make watching motion pictures a joy, and various other decoratives. I had always thought that this is how a living room ought to be, to be able to entertain guests.
My stay at my parent's place was planned to be short - around 3-4 months. But with a new wave of the pandemic and the country going back into a shutdown, it wasn't making much sense to live anywhere else than with my parents. So my stay at home increased to a long time. At this moment, I have already been living with my parents for over a year now.
During this period, I have noticed a clearly lower-on-average productivity on my own end. I have been feeling the lack of time to be productive and lesser number (and quality) of things getting done. Sure, there have been periods of extreme productivity, but they were never sustainable. And the main culprit there seemed to be the living room - the center of the house.
My parents spend a lot of time in enjoyment, which is great for them as they have toiled a lot in their 50+ years of lifetime. And their preferred method of enjoyment is through TV serials, movies and other kinds of entertainment which can be watched on TV, for example reality shows. The thing with these with me is, I like watching them but I would like it more if I am indulging myself in something which is productive while being equally or more enjoyable. When I used to live away from home, away from my parents, I used to spend time playing the Guitar, working out, playing sports, working on my pet projects (which were often business ideas for startups), volunteer activities or any of the other things that I enjoy doing and count as productive use of time. And I was missing this a lot. So during a period when my absence would not matter a lot, I booked a flight for Bangalore, and started staying with one of my colleagues from office.
This colleague, Tapish Rathore, has only recently moved into this place where he is hosting me. And hence, not a lot of furniture has occupied this apartment. The space that exists in the living room here, I have been using it in so many ways - from exercising, hanging out and working to just plain walking around the room and thinking. And just now, I felt so grateful for the same, that I started re-thinking about the kind of house I want to live in - the kind of living room that it should have. I want to host guests at my place, but at the same time, I want to have this kind of a flexibility in it.
So here is my first idea along this line: the TV and home theatre system anyway do not occupy a lot of space in the room when they are not turned on, but the sofa set needs to be repurposed. And an innovative and new (or even weird-looking) sofa would be a nice way to host guests. So why not build my own sofa set. And I will build them such that it can be repurposed when I am done using it for hanging out with family member or guests. The idea is to simply flip it on its head to convert it into a treadmill. And this treadmill can have extensions which can attach it to the standing workstation that I will have for myself. Hence, the same piece of furniture can act as a sofa when I want to host people, and its arms can turn into the legs of the treadmill, which I can use for walking and working. Okay, I don't have to always work when I am using my treadmill, I can just use it to work-out or just warm my body up when I am getting ready for my home work-out (which I think is going to be a regular part of my routine throughout my life). And the cherry-on-top here is that I can have multiple pieces of this furniture in my living room, which would account for more seating space for guests, or more treadmills for me, my wife and my children to work-out at once.
I can start out small and experiment with it, the material of the belt for the treadmill, the design of the arms and legs of this furniture, the sturdiness of the treadmill as well as the comfort of the sofa. Once I have cracked all of this, I can in fact start manufacturing this and selling it to the general consumer, who might be struggling with their productivity due to the existence of sofas in their living rooms like me.
Before I thought of this, I was also thinking of other designs for getting rid of the sofa. For example, there is a modular design for chairs and furniture which embeds them into the wall when not in use. There is also the wall mountable beds which serve a different purpose while they are wall mounted, like a book shelf, and you bring them down to turn them into a sofa. But in each of them, I felt that the non-use mode needed to occupy much less volume than the furniture itself, which might not be doable in the case of sofa. So here is a description of what I could think of. I would love to hear your thoughts about this. Feel free to reach out to me through my website.