image from here
when we originally had our house designed we decided on 5 bedrooms upstairs. master plus 4 more.
at that point we had four children. then i was blessed with pregnancy and another baby 🙂 we shuffled various ideas around on how to ‘divide’ the kids into the planned spaces. every time we had the conversation it was never settling. and to tell you the truth, even when we had four children and they each had their ‘own’ space i was just………well, so so with the whole idea of them each having their own room.
i remember wondering what it would be like to share a room growing up, as i always had my own. my husband shared a room for all but 2 of his years at home. and really, we need to know how to share space throughout our adult life so why not prepare our children for that? in college you have a roommate, when you get married you have a roommate 🙂 at work, often you have to share something…space, copy machine, phone etc.
the other issue that i always dread dealing with (even in this house) is: when the baby is old enough how will we RE arrange the rooms???
so throughout the planning process, our having our fifth child, we came up with a logical solution for our family:
Bunk Rooms!
one for the girls
one for the boys
it solved all our room dividing problems and more! 🙂
1. the rooms will be much larger since we’re combining the spaces. allowing for more bookcases, which was always on our ‘wish list’.
2. each room can have one large bathroom versus a smaller jack and jill style bathroom.
3. when the little dubs is old enough he can go into the ‘boy bunk room’. no questions.
4. Lord willing, when we have more babies, and they’re old enough to move out of the nursery, same as above….if the little munchkin is a girl she’ll join the girls in the ‘girl bunk room’ …if the little one is a boy, he’ll join the boy’s in the ‘boy bunk room’….no more agonizing decision making!
5. the bunk rooms will help prepare the children to know how to share their space! (there is plenty of room around the house if they need alone time!)
6. another bonus… hopefully the children will continue to talk through their struggles since they won’t be able to slam their ‘own’ bedroom door shut 🙂
amen.
i will be posting sequels to this and cover bunk choices, decor, layout, lighting etc.