<p>Did you ever switch bedrooms or are you planning on switching bedrooms when your kid leaves for college? </p>
<p>My oldest son leaves tomorrow for Cornell. He has a very large bedroom-2 walk in closets, lots of windows, big furniture etc. My youngest son’s room is super small-I think in the house plan that it was meant to be a study. My daughter has the same size of room as my oldest son. We want to switch the boys rooms but I feel so horrible like we are throwing our son out of our house, but it would be unfair to our other son to stay in that small bedrooom, especially since he is in junior high and always has tons of friends sleepover.</p>
<p>I would appreciate any experiences, thoughts, advice-thanks so much.
Because of my son’s sports schedule he will not be able to come home from college until Thanksgiving and I am so worried that it will be a strange homecoming coming home to a different bedroom??</p>
<p>Ask the one leaving how he feels about it before you do it. He may not mind; he might realize it’s his brother’s turn to have the “good” room. Or he might not be comfortable with that now, but a year from now he might not care. At any rate, I wouldn’t move anything until you talk to him about it.</p>
<p>Another option - the younger brother could move into the “good” room while Cornell is gone; he could return to his own smaller room when Cornell is home. My husband had 2 younger brothers who shared a room; when DH was away at college his youngest brother moved into his room, but when DH came home younger brother went back to the shared room. (I don’t think he moved all his stuff, he just slept in H’s room, did his homework, etc, but I think his clothes mostly stayed in his own room).</p>
<p>Thanks so much. Yes, we have asked him and talked about it and he realizes that it would be silly for his room to just stay empty. He knows that he will not be coming home often and he loves his brother so much and wants him to have the room-it is just a strange adjustment all at once.</p>
<p>My son very willingly moved into a smaller bedroom at home at the point when he moved to an off-campus apartment at college with a 12-month lease and realized that he would be spending almost all of his time there.</p>
<p>But he might have objected if the move had happened back when he lived in the dorms and spent all of his breaks, including the summers, at home.</p>
<p>I second the option of the younger son moving back and forth, without radically changing the older son’s room. I saw my son’s room as being his room until he moved out of the house after graduation. My daughter’s room was smaller, so she spilled over into the smallest bedroom and had two rooms.</p>
<p>I don’t know if Cornell is far from your home or not. Freshman year of college can be a big adjustment for some. I think your son will want to feel like he’s coming home to be home and not be a guest in his family home.</p>
<p>Now when my son graduated and moved out, my daughter went to town moving into his room. She painted it herself and had it redecorated in a less than a week.</p>
<p>Not from experience but from talking with other parents - I’d leave his room alone until after the fall semester. Let him come home for Thanksgiving and Christmas to “his room” - he is dealing with enough without having his “roots” disturbed.</p>
<p>We had our oldest pack her stuff up when she went to college. Her sister moved into her bedroom. The only thing that miffed the older sister is that the younger sister was taking measurements and bringing paint chips home during that summer before the older one left.</p>
<p>She said that she felt like someone was measuring her for a coffin before she had died.</p>
<p>When she came back for short term stays, she stayed in the guest room downstairs.</p>
<p>My bias is to leave the rooms as they are when possible. At our recent college orientation weekend, this was strongly suggested, as well. Your younger son has been in his room all this time - a little longer won’t make a difference. He could use the larger room to hang out with his friends, to spread out and study or for sleepovers with his brother’s permission - but I’d keep his room as his room, at least for now. My older child has a few friends whose parents moved or changed things around immediately after they left for college and the reality of it was harder on them than they thought. Of course there are situations in which you really have no choice - and in the long run it may be practical to make the switch. I’d wait a bit, though.</p>
<p>Younger D will be moving into her sister’s much larger room as soon as she can. We are much too practical a family to leave the room unused. I don’t think any of my kids has that big an attachment to his/her room.</p>
<p>Our younger son moved in immediately into his older brother’s room… it was bigger and had a beautiful view … now, older son is back…and he is in the smaller room still… </p>
<p>My grandfather moved in with us when I was in college…I got a pull out chair bed in the family room in the basement…twin sized! But the stereo was down there…and a tv…so, I minded, but not so much…</p>
<p>Did it…and it worked out fine. As much as we like having older child home, it is also helping him gradually realize that he will probably want to be on his own when school is over. </p>
<p>My mother completely changed over the rooms when kids left for college. First bedroom vacated was made into a den…since there wasn’t one in the house. Second bedroom vacated was made into an office. </p>
<p>Both had pull-out hollywood beds, so we all went home for visits…but never lived there once we were done with college. </p>
<p>So…that strategy worked. Hope it works for us, too!</p>
<p>Oprah once did a tv show on something akin to this. She had someone on the show who suggested changing the kids rooms every six months (personally couldn’t imagine the work) so that the younger kids didn’t feel that the older ones always got the better room.</p>
<p>It does always seem to work out that the older kids get the bigger room(s), and really the younger ones may never get a chance, if you wait until the older one graduates, etc. Speaking as the middle of three myself, I finally got the big room senior year of high school. They never gave it to my sister, even though I was gone most of the rest of the time they owned the house. I’m not sure what she thought. My husband, the younger of two did not have a room (he had a sun parlor) until his parents got a bigger house and his sister’s room was empty while she was at school. He did not think it was right.</p>
<p>We don’t have this issue in our family, so no current advice.</p>
<p>There is no doubt that my older D has the better room. Simply, her younger brother didn’t even exist, and wasn’t more than a possibility, when we built the bedroom portion of our house. </p>
<p>Halfway through D’s second year in college she offered to swap rooms with her brother. She even packed up some things in anticipation we’d move her when she was away in college. Much to our surprise, and even to his, S said he’d rather keep his room. It was smaller, didn’t have a cool skylight or bay window… but it was HIS. So D’s beautiful bedroom stands empty. S’s smaller, cluttered room remains beloved despite its drawbacks. </p>
<p>It was always understood that my daughter would move from her tiny closet-sized room into her brother’s spacious room when he went off to college; however, I said that she had to do the work of the move, which did involve some cleaning and clearing out of stuff from his room. That was 7 years ago. The kids have both moved in and out numerous times since then… and d. never did get around to moving her stuff. </p>
<p>The worst of it is that my son’s stuff has now spilled over into the small room. I honestly don’t know where they will sleep if both come home at the same time again in the future.</p>
<p>My D appropriated S’s room & kept her own for the past 2 years while S was away at college (his room is about 20 square feet larger than hers. This year, we’re going to let me use it as an office & keep her out of it, since all she does is trash 2 rooms & the living room.<br>
I actually NEED an office & our home doesn’t have one, so we’re going to have his room be my office. He only plans to come home for Christmas & perhaps a short while next summer, so it should work out.
D needs to learn to live within her space anyway, since she’ll be going away to college in January & will likely have a room mate there, which will be a big change for her (tho she did have room mates when she was on a fun tour in July this summer).
We will see how it all works out.
When I was growing up, we all shared rooms & when anyone was away, the remaining occupant spread out. The occupant tried to contract a bit when anyone came home for summer or after graduating, but I moved out into an apartment because there was no room for me to unpack. Everyone else in my family moved back to my parents’ home & lived there until they got married. That’s a pretty common situation in HI with very expensive rentals.</p>
<p>Guess I’m among the hard hearted. The weekend my son was moving out for college his friend came by…said “Mrs. X I like what you are doing with the guest room” and cracked up.<br>
DS had already packed up and I was moving furniture etc. DS was going across country so not home too often. I did leave it in very neutral, masculine colors and it is a very basic guest room so he didn’t feel he was sleeping in my new sewing room or office or something.<br>
Lots of people advised me to do nothing to his room for six months but he really didn’t care and I really liked the idea of having a guest room.
My friends do too…it’s always clean and the bed made up so if someone has a bit too much to drink or just wants to stay over it’s ready.</p>
<p>None of my kids have had dibs on any bedroom. Sometimes I came home to find they had switched on their own. We never did any gender specific decorating. The last S to leave home painted the room he was using with plum colored paint he found in the basement and completed the decor with an orange carpet from his grandparents’ house. Ugh! But it made a nice guest room after I took up the carpeting.</p>
<p>Hmmm…been there done that. During our last addition 7 yrs ago, D1 moved into our old master with its own bathroom. As soon as she packed up for college, D2 moved in since it was spacious and had a recessed area with a large desk and file cabinet…perfect study area as she entered high school. D1 was relegated to the smallest of the 4 bedrooms, and ended up sharing the common bathroom with D3 when she returned home during the holidays. In a couple of weeks, D2 will be leaving for CMU. After some small renovations by DH, D3 will move in. The only catch is that the occupant of that room has the responsibility of keeping the bathroom clean. ;)</p>