{room sharing}

qI’m tired. Yep. I spent a majority of the day doing nothing that was life giving and the other part of the day I spent rearranging furniture. Let me tell you about it.

My little family of five lives in a three bedroom house. It made sense originally to have the older girls share a room and let Bernadette have her own. She’s the youngest, so it made sense that she would be up more at night and then our CPAP journey with her, it just seemed best to keep her in our own room.

Until now.

I got the idea the other day it was time to combine the girls in one room. I know, it probably sounds crazy, but when I get an idea in my head I go for it. Ask my husband or anyone who is close to me and they will tell you it’s the truth. So that’s exactly what I did.

I have no real reason to put them all in a room. Honestly. Bernadette could be in a room by herself for as long as we live in this place and I am sure she would be fine. CPAP had been the biggest draw to keep her there because I didn’t want the other girls to be waking up all night as we tended to her. But, that hasn’t been happening according to my own plans, so why not combine the three of them?

*I might add, I was inspired by a friend of mine who has four little girls. FOUR. And they live in a much smaller house than we do yet they are making it work well for them with room sharing!*

The girls were thrilled at the idea of moving their little sister into their room. In fact, they were both so excited they offered to help clean and move things around. I started out by emptying their room from the little odds and ends toys that have no purpose and put them in the garage to go through at another time. I really wanted to go through all of their toys at the same time, but I knew that my time would be limited. Inevitably, someone would need something, especially if they got bored. I kept my focus on rearranging the rooms and I’ll go through all the junk another time.

My oldest volunteered to help take Bernadette’s crib apart, which I happily obliged because I had a lot of things to get done. And that was one thing she would be happy to help with. The cleaning and organizing part of it, not so much.

She took the wrench tool and got to work while I tried to envision just where the heck I was going to put every single item that I wanted in their room.

I quickly realized the room is fairy small and the bunk beds the older girls share take up quite a bit of room. Although it would be tighter on space if they had single beds. Bunk beds sure are space savers, but they are big. Sometimes, I feel like their massive appearance makes the room feel much smaller. Either way, it works when you want three little girls to share one room.

Once the crib was apart, I moved it into the girls’ room and started putting it back together. There was only one spot available big enough for the crib so that’s where it went. It works for now although I am already scheming on how I want to try to move things around to make it work even better.

I also realized that Bernadette is a toddler and while she is still in diapers, she is definitely past the phase of needing a changing table. And so am I for that matter. It took up a ton of room because it is big and bulky. Out with the changing table.

I have these cubby organizers from Target which I love and was able to put one in the closest and the other one two in the room. It might sound crazy, but I use cubbies instead of dressers. The biggest reason being, I don’t have the time or patience to fold tiny clothes. Especially when those clothes get tossed onto the floor every morning while little girls are planning out their daily outfits. I saw this solution once on this blog and am forever thankful as that was the very day I stopped folding tiny clothes.

Bernadette’s diapers go on a bin on top of her clothes storage and the girls have one with an extra row for the sock and miscellaneous clothing items they have collected.

For toys and books. I use one of the cubby storage containers as a bookcase for now which has been working out really well for awhile. Bernadette loves books and it’s nice because I can put books for her in the lower cubby spaces and books that she’s not ready for because she will tear pages out in the higher spaces.

I use some under the bed storage bins for other toys like blocks, trains, and other random plastic toys. Dress-up, barbies, and doll things along with Bernadette’s toys reside in the living room in a cube organizer from Ikea.

I’m excited for the change for many reasons. Mostly because the three girls will get to share a room altogether while it’s still somewhat cool. It frees up the other room for my desk, our keyboard and to have overnight guests. I’m hopeful this will be a great solution for the time being but the good news is, we can always reevaluate.