Whether you’re dealing with cramped quarters or Simply seeking a way to be original in your interior design efforts, these alternatives to the traditional nightstand might be just the thing.

Your home has to work for you. That’s the only real rule we follow here. So, if the typical nightstand offering isn’t cutting it for you, isn’t exciting you, or is turning out to be too much of a clutter hot spot, then go rogue. Be daring and different and resolute as such. Dream up some bedside surface substitute that feels right. Need some inspiration to get the brainwaves flowing?

Here comes:

1. If you want all the benefit of a tabletop without the cabinet underneath (whether because it feels too bulky in your small space, or because you keep throwing miscellaneous crap inside and have decided you have to stop feeding the beast), then a wall-mounted shelf or repurposed drawer is likely desperate to sing you its tiny-footprint lullaby.

2. If you’re seeking serenity, above all, and that combined with a hint of whimsy, hook up a slab to a piece of string and wha-bam, you’ve got the most darling bedside situation ever to be DIY-ed.

(I’ve just decided this is almost wholly unpractical and I can’t imagine anyone actually doing this in their master bedroom, but hey, it looks good in a post! Right? Wrong? You have this in your master bedroom? You put your infant on it when you’re too tired to rock the child, yourself? Well, congratulations, you, my dear, have outsmarted the system.)

3. If vintage is your vibe, then a bedside trunk surely needs to be trucked in.

4. Of course, the bed adjacent desk is always a fail safe small-space solution.

It’s a little mixing of church and state, but hey, nothing is truly homogenous these days. Nor should it be (?)

5. Finally, I present unto you the case for any dream (surface) will do.

Try a tray table?

Why not!

Got a drum?

Tap, tap it out.

You are the sole conductor of the majesty that is your house, after all.

Image credits: Mobel Pobel, unknown, home of Roxy Te Owens, founder of Society Social via HGTV, Monsters Circus, Decorators Notebook, The Style Files, Pencil and Paper via One Kings Lane, Lily Z Design, unknown