General purpose 'everything'

He is tired, no doubt, sleeping, oblivious to the noise and happenings around him. But what is that he is sleeping on? It is a cart, it is a bed, it is a place to rest, a single item with many uses.
The idea of 'multipurpose' or 'general purpose' equipment perhaps originated from an old practice of maximizing the benefit of an item by diversifying or extending its uses; like what we see in that picture. It saves money, and if we don't have much money we have not much choice but to make do with what we have, and hence the cartbed - a multipurpose cart. It can't be a multipurpose bed. The name after the adjective multipurpose should be the orginal name the item is used for, not the name of items its uses are extended to.
When resources are limited, we tend to be creative.