<p>It is impossible to compare one family to another. With D gone to college,it is only 2 of us in 4 bedroom, 3 full baths good size house. We have no plans to change her bedroom and her bathroom. Other families might be in need to use it.</p>
<p>My S’s room and bath were flooded in a hurricane right after he left for college. So, it finally got decorated in his style, rather than how it was when he moved in and lived in it for years. Rather silly of me, but he now has a blue berber rug, a blue wall, and his bath has wood cabinets and tan walls, rather than the white prissy style that it was. His play room has been totally redone to serve as my home office.</p>
<p>I just wish he’d use his room more than a few days a year. And now that he’s finally in a nice apt, he may be moving overseas.</p>
<p>
Yep - now that S1 and S2 are married/getting married and moved out, DD’s room is only occasionally used as a guest room. We use a white sheet as a dust cover for the bed so that it stays clean. It will go for weeks not being lifted or disturbed. Run the vac/dust cloth through there somewhat regularly to keep the dust down.</p>
<p>DS and I spent the last 3 days going through his closet and drawers trying to determine what is a keeper and what can go. I bought several plastic storage bins for him to use for the keepers. I mostly want his closet after he leaves so I can get my quilting stash out of my closet and into his. (Quilters love to look at their stash, and mine is buried in the back of my closet - can’t wait to be able to open DS’s closet door and see all that great material neatly folded and ready to use.) I’ll push his bed against the wall to make a little more floor room, but plan on leaving all his posters and decorations on the wall just like he now has them so when he comes home for Christmas it will still feel like his room to him.</p>
<p>I asked DS to sort through his things for two reasons: 1) as mentioned above and 2) to help him transition from this house to his own place. We’ve talked about how college is a transitional living space - you get use to living on your own with roommates and making all your own decisions. Eventually, you end up with a place of your own without roommates, etc. He knows all his valuables are safely stored and waiting for him when he gets his first permanent home (after college graduation), and I get to use his space without worrying that I might be throwing out something important to him. </p>
<p>As a side perk - I think DS enjoyed looking at all his old memorabilia. He even enjoyed looking back through his college search material. My impression is that he got a snapshot of how he ended up where he is today and is pretty pleased with himself. Not a bad boost of confidence to have just before taking that first big flight out of the nest.</p>
<p>DS’s room is his room, but also now the official guest bdrm, since from now on he will basically be home for only @6 weeks a yr (Xmas and a couple of weeks for the summer). I have tried to swap out the linens so they look more guest room and not so much teenager, but the rest remains, i.e. his bookshelves, his wall art and his clothes. Probably next yr when he leaves, It will be the total conversion. I say that because he is an AFROTC student, and after next yr, he will be only home for T-Day, Xmas and spring break the rest of the time he belongs to the AF, and hopefully it will get me pre-adjusted to the fact that he will never live home again. :(</p>
<p>DD won’t be going to college for another year, but hopes to go to school across the country. We have a small house and both of our girls share the master bedroom. When older DD goes to college in a year DH and I are taking back the master bedroom and giving younger DD the second bedroom. We will paint and redo both bedrooms at that time. We will have a futon under the bed so that older DD will have a place to sleep when she is home, but she knows we will be boxing up a lot of her stuff she wants to keep. </p>
<p>She has no problem at all with this. Since my girls have always had to share a room it was not a big deal to DD when she spent a month this summer in a program on the east coast at a university and had to share a bedroom. She said lots of people complained about this and she thought it was silly.</p>
<p>S is an only child, so there are no siblings itching to claim his room. I do plan to clean the room, though I may have to go in there carrying a whip and a chair. It’s been so many years since the place was dusted, heaven only knows what I’ll find living/growing in there! :)</p>
<p>My son’s room is pretty much the way he left it, a bed, a dresser and a book case.</p>
<p>he has chalkboard paint on his walls and I haven’t erased a thing since he left.</p>
<p>Admittedly my sister would like to claim my room. We have three bedrooms and four people, and besides the master I have the bigger room. But my parents have already made it clear that switching is completely off the table. We just got our own rooms four years ago and she has trashed the room she’s in, so she’s stuck with it. I could very well end up back here and commuting to grad school in two years (parents have invited me to do so, will probably pay rent), so I am glad at the very least I don’t have to move into my sister’s trainwreck of a room.</p>
<p>Oldfort-we also have the younger D shopping in the older D’s room. What is even worst when my younger D’s friends also go shopping in older D’s room. The two rooms share a jack and jill bathroom. Younger D has taken over the entire counter top including the two sinks and all the drawers. My older D can’t stand to even enter and when she is visiting she uses my shower or her brother’s bathroom.
With the oldest we did nothing for the first 3 yrs. Last year when I realized she was probably not going to live here again I changed the linen and curtains. Cleaned up some of the clutter. Her dresser and closet plus bookcase is still as she left it. Now we can have guests use that room. What annoys me is now that I have it looking pretty nice I get annoyed when my Son has several friends sleep over and one of them decides he should use my D’s bed. The bed that I have made so nicely with crisp clean sheets and nice comforter.
With my son I have not done much. I usually like to at least clean it. I wash the sheets, make the bed. Do any undone laundry and tidy the desk and basically make it so we can see the floor. All the toys, posters and junk is still up and in the closets and cupboards. It still looks like his room but a clean version. This is his Jr year and I am going to go through his dresser drawers and clean out clothes that I know don’t fit him. He won’t care and I know he won’t even notice.
We also have a dedicated guest room.</p>
<p>No, younger D got her older sister’s much bigger room when she left. Older D had to stay in the smaller room this summer. When S leaves, I am thinking his room will become an exercise/guest room. The rooms don’t belong to my kids - they merely occupy them for a time.</p>
<p>D’s room still has her furniture, knicknacks on the dresser, dolls, the owlry, etc. intact. She graduated college last year and is working on the East coast but just spent a week-plus back at home. And is still just messy as ever with respect to her bathroom, clothes on the bedroom floor, etc. </p>
<p>When she’s not visiting, her room is the guest room. Or refuge of the non-snoring spouse if need be. <cough></cough></p>
<p>I have just finished cleaning Ds room. We moved her yesterday. Washed all the sheets, sorted cothes that were left, made a good will pile. She told me what she wanted to save, the rest is fair game. She suggested I get rid of some of the book shelves- old and no longer needed. She said she didn’t care if I painted the room. I don’t understand adult kids who feel the need to keep their childhood bedroom as is. You don’t come home to your things, you come home to the people and letting go of old posters, books, trophies, dolls is a sign of growing up. </p>
<p>When my girsl were gorwing up, we gave away lots of their toys, clothes, etc, as they passed through different phases of their lives- kingergarten to firth grade, elementary school to middle school, etc. Every Christmas, they went through their belongings, and gladly dontated them. Knowing that some little girl was playing with their barely worn dolls made my Ds happy.</p>
<p>And my oldest gladly gave her sister the bigger bedroom when she left for college, she had it for a long time and fair is fair.</p>
<p>Most moms I know are making their older Ds bedroom, or whichever one is left if swapping was done, their own space, and I say go for it. </p>
<p>There is something cathertic and mature about letting go of childhood things, I think.</p>
<p>“I don’t understand adult kids who feel the need to keep their childhood bedroom as is. You don’t come home to your things, you come home to the people and letting go of old posters, books, trophies, dolls is a sign of growing up.”</p>
<p>I am 20 years old and have long since left my childhood bedroom behind, I have been in the process of redoing it to something more mature ever since my sister moved out of it when I was 14. And, as I explained, in my house we don’t use any of our communal areas. It’s been days since I’ve even seen my dad, my sister is usually in the kitchen as she doesn’t have a computer in her room but she’s hardly ever home, and I see my mom in passing if I go downstairs for food. That’s really it. So at least in my case, as abnormal as it is, you can see why I would hold onto the room at least until I can get my own place, I’d hoped to get an apartment next summer but I don’t know if it will work out yet. My room and the belongings I’ve collected are really the only “home” I have to come back to, the rest of the house has never had any place for me. Returning to sleep on the couch or to a room reclaimed by my parents wouldn’t be coming home anymore. It’d be a place to stay so far better than nothing, but I would prefer to keep my home intact until I can get a new one. </p>
<p>Which I understand is a common feeling even among kids in more average families, nobody likes to feel like they have been displaced before they have a new home. As much as I am sure I will love my dorm, I am never going to be there more than three months at a time and only for 6 or 7 months of the year total. Darn near 6 months of the year I am STILL going to be here, and it’d be nice to still have my own space. I don’t mind if it’s used while I’m gone but for the time I am here, which is still quite a while, I’d like to still have “my” place. Or else everyone in the family will have their own place in the house except me. Who would appreciate that, really?</p>
<p>I am apparently in the minority here. My boys will always have a home here. But they all have moved into year-round housing, and we have converted one room into a comfortable, practical guest room/sewing room that the two older boys have had NO problem enjoying on their breaks from school, and we are in the process of converting our youngest son’s room (after some SERIOUS shoveling) into another guest room/office, where anyone, especially our dear sons, will be welcome and comfy.</p>
<p>This also means that when our boys come home with friends, they have a place to stay, too.</p>
<p>Our oldest has just graduated, and is staying with us TEMPORARILY while he looks for his first step on the career ladder. I like the message that the guest room sends.</p>
<p>On the other hand, we are planning to store their stuff as long as they need us to. We’ve bought lots of boxes, and just ask that they sift through and decide what they want to keep until they they are truly off on their own, and we know that will be many years.</p>
<p>Heck, no, I’m not leaving the kid’s room as it is! I’d like to have at least a path to walk on in there, and think it’s way way past high time for the teddy bears and balloons which I stenciled on the walls when he was a baby to GO! </p>
<p>It’ll still be his room, but without the pieces of a VCR he took apart, clothes, books, magazines, stuffed animals, cups, plates, school papers (some of which may date back to elementary school), tools, game cartridges, old shoes, and more all over the floor. That kid needs new curtains, the room needs new paint, and by golly, I want to see what the floor looks like someday soon!!!</p>
<p>Am with you owl^^^ While mine will have a room to return to it won’t be left “as is”</p>
<p>I’m sure there’s some kind of EPA regulation against leaving my D’s room as she left it!! She’s only been gone since last week, and the rest of her “need to haves” will be leaving here tomorrow when a terrific CC mom will stop by to take them after dropping their son at college (her S goes to school where I live and my D goes to school where she lives). Right now, her things are on her bed and the rest are covering the dining room table and some of the floor, but, as of Monday, I know that I’ll have to tackle the heroic job of digging through the piles of discarded clothing, papers leftover from highschool, programs from shows she’s been in and almost empty make-up containers. Once I sort through all of that-hanging up what still fits, boxing and giving away what doesn’t, and filling trash bags with the “have no use fors”, I’ll strip the bed, wash everything, including the comforter and bed skirt. After the dryer, I’ll fix that tear in the bedskirt where the puppy caught his tooth while chasing the cat and begin putting the room back together. When she comes home for the 4 day weekend in October, she’ll find the room looks different because she can find the floor and there’ll be new curtains! It’s her room, I wouldn’t think of displacing her or giving the room to her brother and she’s always welcome to come home any time.</p>
<p>I just finished, well for today anyway, going through Ds room and making garbage, goodwill, store, and send piles. All the thngs she wants to keep fit into to boot sized boxes. I am freshening up both Ds rooms, new linens, etc. And when they come home their rooms will be peaceful, pretty and comfortable. </p>
<p>Twisted, I wasn’t referring to you and your situatuation, just a general commentary about those kids and parents who keep shrines to their kids, who have pretty much moved on, hopefully, from their childhood. </p>
<p>I asked my Ds, what in here would you want in your first apartment.</p>
<p>Have to say that some of these posts have made me just crack up! The humor is great and I enjoyed reading every one of them. Twisted, I think there is a lot more going on here but in short, my vote is that until you move out for good you always have a room to come home to since there seems to be space for it. And being who I am, I just might leave Dad a note in my room, where he’d see it, reminding him to leave your things alone. I guess if he can take yours, you can take his (doubt you’d want anything) but hey, he set the rules early. </p>
<p>As for my kids rooms, D1 did not come home this summer, is heading into her JR year. I use her room (same as it was pretty much but she has an apt so most of her stuff is there) for my office (I am in there now!). My H also snores terribly and I tend to sleep in here. I sleep great and now only hear him down the hall through 2 closed doors (seriously). D2 just left. Before she left we did the entire room/closet/clothing clean out. Huge bag to Goodwill, 2 huge bags to people I work with who have younger daughters and were thrilled to get her clothes, lots and lots of trash…after she left I just cleaned it up, vacuumed, washed all the bed linens. She is likely to be home this summer but maybe not after that. Until they move out for good they’ll have a room. But after college graduation (even if they come home) I expect there will be some refurbishing. We don’t have guests, ever, so no need for a guest room. I envision a sewing room SOME time in my lifetime!</p>