<p>Futons are GREAT–my S chose one for his bed after trying out all the mattresses at all the bedding stores in HI. He also sampled all the futon mattresses at 3 futon stores & found the platform & mattress he wanted. It’s a double bed that he sets up as a sofa when he feels like it & converts it back to a bed every night. Since space is an issue, they also sell smaller futons that are single beds with footstools.
Another space-saving option is a loft bed or a platform bed with drawers underneath for his “stuff” instead of a dresser–maybe shoved against the wall that younger bro can use as a sofa with throw pillows while older bro is in college. My D has a platform bed we bought from Costco that has a desk underneath it where she sometimes studies (when she’s not in the livng room using the computer).</p>
<p>quiltguru,</p>
<p>We had the kitty border in DD’s room, too!! And ditched it just in the knick of her growing up. DH and I now use her room as an office; we still have her bed in here (I am typing at “her” desk) but she is rarely home now. Actually, she is now married and gone all but a couple of weeks a year. But before her marriage, we used her room to hang out, watch the 13" TV, get absorbed in CC, etc. expect when she was home for the summer. Sounds like your plan is what we actually did. It does work!</p>
<p>My D was upset (freshman) when she came home and found the iron board set up in her room. She likes to have things just the way they were when she comes home, so we tend to use my son’s room more( independent type sophomore) to store things. It depends on the student and where they are emotionally in their adjustment.It has been nice to have guest rooms though and to be able to host close friends when they come to visit. As long as they don’t stay tooo long!</p>
<p>My son’s only a junior and I’m already depressed about the idea of him moving away (but since we live in LA and the closest school he’s even considering is Stanford, I have to deal!). My plan right now is to keep his door closed with a CD player playing Smashing Pumpkins on continuous repeat. Occasionally, I’ll have someone remove Dr. Peppers from the fridge. This way I can fool myself into believing he’s still here.</p>
<p>Hey, at least your kid may end up in the same state as you & a long car ride frm your home. My kid isn’t even applying to any schools in our state & will be at least a 5 hour plane ride from our home. Oh well, we ill all deal one way or another.</p>
<p>okay, my D is looking to the UK schools…</p>
<p>Wow, I feel like the odd person out. <em>grin</em> My partner and rented a house together while my children were still living primarily with their dad, so the house was just big enough for me and sweetie. Then the children wanted/needed to change custody, so they came to live with us. Now we’re jammed into a house that isn’t big enough – but the housing costs here are so bad, and our location is so good for the children, that we decided as a family not to move. </p>
<p>As a result, younger child moved into the second bedroom, which had been “my” room, and older child got stuck with … the living room! We put up a giant IKEA loft, and he has curtains around it and desk/shelves/dresser under, making it a mini room in a room for him. It takes up 1/3 of my living room, though, so when he goes to college, I’m taking it down! The furniture is his to take to college or we can store it for when he has his first off campus place, but there’s no way I’m leaving this big loft up in my living room if he’s away at college. He can sleep on a futon or couch when he visits. </p>
<p>I guess that’s probably cold, but the good side is, he’s going to go to college and his dorm room will seem <em>spacious</em> in comparison to the 5’x6’ space he’s had in high school. :)</p>
<p>I do think that the overriding issue is whether there are enough other rooms in the house to be able to leave it as is; that, plus one’s tendency to like to refurbish and remodel ;). Also, if I truly left S’s room the way he left it, there would be a 6-inch covering of papers and paraphernalia in the room as S never discards anything. </p>
<p>When S left for college, I completely refurbished his room, which is a second master suite in the house. He now has a walk-in closet and a pretty bathroom as opposed to the tiny closet and childish bath he had when he left. His furniture and most of his stuff stayed the same but it is repainted, recarpeted, a new armchair and has a beige-Cardinal color theme as opposed to “boy blue” it was when he was growing up. If he doesn’t like it, I certainly haven’t heard any complaints! </p>
<p>We all hang out there from time to time. The girls like to study/read in the armchair and I like to do desk work at his large desk. But when he comes home–which is rare because he is gone during the summer and spring break playing ball, so is really only one month in the summer and 3 weeks at Christmas–it is entirely his and he looks extremely comfortable. So I feel good about the decision to re-do it. It is much nicer now than it was when he left. So I think the issue is that it wasn’t really that nice before, hence it was an easy decision to re-do it.</p>
<p>The tougher question we will face is when the girls graduate, because I will be sorely tempted to downsize to a more sophisticated but smaller home. I can see that that will present psychological issues, but I will worry about that later.</p>
<p>As soon as S#1 is out the door in August, S#2 (Felix) is taking over his room (actually a library) to get away from his current roomie, S#3 (Oscar). After moving twice during high school, S#1 has virtually no possessions (except his now dead pet spider in a jar and a collection–I don’t ask why–of Sobee bottles (?!) Into the trash with those), and is not at all attached to “his” room. He’s ready to get in the car/on the plane (depending which college he picks) with a few clothes and his laptop. I know I’ll miss the kid in some ways, (classical piano backgroud music–I asked him to record some pieces for me, but he probably won’t because I asked…) but I am really looking forward to getting him out of my house–he takes up a lot of “emotional space.” I’ll be happy to see smaller laundry piles and grocery bills, too. There will always be something–couch, futon, bunk, airbed, floorspace–for him when he comes home.</p>
<p>I wonder how much our kids are REALLY attached to their stuff and keeping things exactly so, and how much of it is a reaction to parents wanting them to be that way</p>
<p>So long as my parents don’t screw up my meticulously organized bookcase (30 CDs and 90+ books shelved by height), I don’t care what they do with my room. I don’t have much in it aside from clothes, books, a few photos, a painting (of mine), my laptop, and guitar and amp, most of which I’m taking to college anyway.</p>
<p>Besides, I rearrange my room every now and then just for a change of pace. A new setup when I return from college would seem a breath of fresh air, especially since I’ll be leaving a probably messy college dormroom for a probably neat and ordered room (because my mom will go on a cleaning spree before I visit home, she’s like that).</p>
<p>By the way, my parents moved from southern California to paradise (actually Tiburon, California) during my freshman year at college, so I came “home” to a new rented home and no room to call my own, but it never bothered me because Tiburon was so wonderful you didn’t need anything besides that view and the small town feel of Main Street. I still had my parents and my cat and that was really all that mattered.</p>
<p>However, if they had stayed in the old house, I am not sure how I would have felt it they had changed my room or someone else had taken it. Somehow, I think it would have been okay but I didn’t have to go through it.</p>
<p>OMG, Tiburon <em>is</em> paradise. <em>grin</em> My partner is a Marin County boy, and wants to return to the motherland someday; right now he’s in exile on the peninsula. Our little town is like that, though, and that’s why the children didn’t want us to move. They love small townness, and our downtown main street, and being blocks away from Caltrain and all that.</p>
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<p>Yeah, my children moved here with a couple of suitcases, and their belongings didn’t come until almost a year later. My son’s stuff is all pretty much in the garage except the things important enough to fit into his loft. Both children are pretty much of the mind now that the realize that stuff didn’t mean that much to them, because they’ve lived happily without it. My son could pack every single thing he owns and keeps in his cube into our car and go to college in one trip. (And I have a feeling he probably will…)</p>
<p>We have jokingly said that DS wants us to put up the red velvet cords and keep it as the shrine he believes it should be…</p>
<p>Since he is now home less than 6-8 weeks all year we plan to make it into the guest room since my wife has started working from home and has converted the exisiting guest room into her office. I guess we’ll give DD at least a year before we start working on her room…biggest issue with both is getting rid of all the collected junk that is cluttering their rooms.</p>