On FB - How many bunk beds can you stack?

[Jessica]

I'd do a triple bunk bed, but only if they ended up something like this so the kid has room to sit up without bumping their head.

Also, they'd be standard twin mattresses, not what appear to be toddler mattresses.

[dairyfreelife]

Meh, I'm having a hard time snarking on the bunk beds in that post or the idea of kids sharing a room.* I mean, I had three people in my room in college, and we stacked our beds three high by choice. It was fun (for a while, at least)! I had the middle one and turned it into a little cave. :) My sister and I chose to continue sharing a room until I graduated from high school and moved out, and as someone else pointed out, it's normal to share space like that in many cultures.

I mean, putting your kids on Costco shelves is obviously in a different ballpark. And I loved reading in bed, so Kelly's contraption would have been out for me too.

*Then again, I would totally still sleep in a bunk bed if I had the chance, as long as I get the top bunk and especially if the beds are more than two high. I fucking love bunk beds.

I shared a room with my sister growing up. We had bunk beds, though went back and forth on the stacked and double bed. It's not that weird and there is nothing wrong with it. All my friends growing up shared rooms too. They were two sets of sisters as well. One set was from a family of nine. I just do not see what is so strange about room sharing. I think the majority of children across the globe share a room with someone and the majority of adults grew up sharing a bedroom too.

The shelves as beds though...yeah, you need to stop having a children. That's a sign you have too many.

[It'sFunToRun]

I'd do a triple bunk bed, but only if they ended up something like this so the kid has room to sit up without bumping their head.

Also, they'd be standard twin mattresses, not what appear to be toddler mattresses.

I like that! There's also a little more privacy to that setup. Plus if one kid masturbated, it doesn't seem like it would shake the beds of the others.

[Mama Mia]

Yes, we are definitely on the same page. The concept of a child having it's own room, or even own bed, is actually a very 1st World and 21st century notion. Most people can live happily in smaller houses. I do draw the line at packing 11 people into an RV or stacking children on 4 levels of industrial shelving as permanent housing in the US though!

Re. CPS. To be fair, it's a horrible job and badly underpaid. They do need to advocate very hard for their clients without adequate funding or any appreciation. We used to assume staff turnover approximately every 3 years in APS. We rather cynically estimated I year to train a new SW about reality and get them up to speed, 1 year of effective work, and 1 year when they were becoming burned out and rapidly less efficient - and then they quit. Who could blame them. There were obvious exceptions to that and some brilliant people, but the job is completely thankless and incredibly stressful.

I hear you on the job stress! We used to occasionally hire some sweet young idealistic thing straight out of college....so sad to watch them turn bitter and cynical by Christmas! I much preferred hiring folks with more life experience- didn't feel as much like we completely wrecked their worldview! :D

[jaynie]

I don't have anything against bunk beds or room sharing generally, but I have stayed at a hostel with a very "poor-backbacking-students-stacked-on-shelving" feel (complete with plywood floor!) and dear god was it ever claustrophobic. Super hot in the middle of winter, stinky, absolutely no room to turn around (we had to invent a system for waking up in the morning), not a single moment that the frame is entirely still all night, and so on. Which is fine for 10 Euros a night when you're adventuring, but for every day of your childhood? I would actually have gone insane, I'm sure.

[Jana814]

I just keep imagining what would happen if they collapsed. It'd be like a house of cards.

Got that right!

[Jana814]

I have nothing against kids sharing a room either if that is the only opinion (ie large family & don't have a choice)

[browngrl]

I am not sure about triple bunk beds. My brother in law is a pediatric emergency room doctor and he sees so many injuries (some severe) from bunk bed falls that he point blank refuses to let his children have a bunk bed. So if regular bunk beds are associated with injuries from falls - what will be the injury rate for triple stacked beds?

[Coco]

I stayed in a cabin once with my daughters Girl Scout troop and it was two rooms of triple bunks (cabin slept 24). It was awful, no way to sit up and read, and there was no graceful way to get out of the bottom bunk. Most of the adults had brought air mattresses and slept in the open room. I did it for two nights, I cannot imagine that for a whole childhood.

right? lol That reminds me of an Assemblies of God kids' camp my siblings and our cousins all went to for a couple of summers in the '90's before my parents made us go fundie mennonite. The girls dorm had narrow bunks like that, i could barely sleep afraid to fall off the edges. It was like a barracks.

-- oh my gosh it's still the same. :lol: over 20 years later. awesome. youtu.be/ckfdtYZnG-Q except we didn't play mud volleyball back then, thank goodness.

Re the barf-on-a-plywood-floor problem that was mentioned earlier... The Coghlan's plywood floor was hopefully varnished. My sister-in-law and her hubby have done that in at least one bedroom in their mobile home. My parents tried to paint a plywood floor in a mobile home with garage floor paint, but the furniture scuffed it up. Varnish would be better. Still so ugly. This is why i don't want eleventy kids.

[thoughtful]

I'd do a triple bunk bed, but only if they ended up something like this so the kid has room to sit up without bumping their head.

Also, they'd be standard twin mattresses, not what appear to be toddler mattresses.

I believe that Kim and Perry just bought foam rubber (and spent very little, if I remember correctly) and cut it to that size.

Previous thread, for anyone who wants to see more:

viewtopic.php?f=118&t=1080

There's probably more about it in that archive -- it has come up pretty frequently when the LiaS Coghlans have been discussed.

ETA -- I found the post with their original plan for this project:

inashoe.com/2009/10/crazy-bunk-bed-update/

And the subsequent one, describing what they actually did:

inashoe.com/2009/10/crazy-bunkbed-update/

[Full enough quiver]

We had 6 in our room growing up. We had two bunk beds that had a full on bottom twin on top. My sister and I shared, cousin had the top. older sisters shared the other, with youngest sister on top. They had drawers underneath for our clothes, and we had two closets, since we had the master bedroom. We actually didn't mind sharing, plus we had our own bathroom. My brothers had the same full on bottom, twin on top, drawers underneath setup in their small room. It worked ok.

My kids share too. The bedrooms in our house are 10x10. The girls have extra long twin loft beds that have a small desk and dresser underneath. They share a small closet and a second dresser. Its not a ton of space, but they fit comfortably. The boys had a bunk bed until they abused the privilege. We disassembled it, and now they have two twin matresses stacked in the corner that we pull out at night. It looks awful, but they can wrestle without killing themselves now, so I guess that's good. They had a tall shared dresser too, but they shoved the clothes everywhere, and I got sick of it. So now they have clear plastic bins in the closet labeled with their names. 1 each for clean clothes, another for dirty ones. We hang up their nicer, dressy clothes, but everything else, they toss in their bins. So much easier to keep the room clean.

I don't see anything wrong with sharing. What I don't get is why fundies don't put the kids in the master bedroom, or put parents in the living room, or those types of arrangements. And for the love of god, costco shelving is not a bed. If you have eleventy kids, you may have to make a few sacrifices so that everyone is comfortable.

[Feberin]

My kids share a room right now. We just moved them in together because they actually truthfully wanted to share a room. They're only four and two years old and a boy and a girl. We'd like to have a third and we have a three bedroom house with two large bedrooms and one bedroom that's like a closet. So far the tiny bedroom has served as a nursery for both of our kids. And honestly having a third and having two kids share the larger bedroom is way more fair then one child having a bedroom that's like three times the size of the other child's bedroom. I agree with others that the concept of children not sharing a bedroom is fairly new. We probably could manage to move into a four bedroom house before we have a third but it would mean cutting back seriously on things that we find extremely important for our children like college funds, extracurriculars and preschool.

[Haligh the Liar]

Triple Bunk Ideas

At the very least, the second set of bunk beds in the OP aren't that claustrophobic, as they are sort of parallel/perpendicular/parallel staggered, so the kids can sit up straight and read, and move comfortably.

[DGayle]

From an anthropological pov, it is entirely normal to bed- or room-share, not just during infancy but throughout childhood.

"It is only in industrialized Western societies such as those in North America and some parts of Europe that sleep has become a private affair. The West, in fact, stands out from the rest of humanity in the treatment of its children during sleep. In one study of 186 nonindustrial societies, children sleep in the same bed as their parents in 46 percent of the nonindustrial cultures, and in a separate bed but in the same room in an additional 21 percent. In other words, in 67 percent of the cultures around the world, children sleep in the company of others."

libaware.economads.com/sleepwithme.php

Largely out of necessity. If you don't have access to birth control, chances are you can't afford a larger home when you've got so many mouths to feed. In rural areas where there's a lot of sharing, there's more open space, and kids can claim some space as their own. In places where families are packed closer together, you often get slums with all its many, many problems.

Just because many NONindustrial countries see this as normal doesn't mean we should. In a lot of nonindustrial countries, vaccines are the exception. Who wants to argue against vaccines in the first world based on what the third world does?

[DGayle]

So a specific rental unit may only be approved for 2 person per bedroom occupancy (bedroom defined as having a closet and a window.)

So if you own a house built when wardrobes were typical instead of built-in closets, that you can't rent that unit? The definition for bedroom I've read is that it must have a window and a door that shuts it off from common areas of the unit. Otherwise most older homes wouldn't be legal to rent simply because the rooms all lack built-in closets, which would make it a 0-bedroom dwelling.

[DGayle]

Those pictures always reminds me of conditions in a bomb shelter in WWII London. It's fucking industrial shelving with a thin mattress, no way to sit up properly, and look at the plywood floor! It's literal warehousing of children. :(

The beds are also extremely narrow. In the second picture, the second bed from the top, you can see how much of the bottom sheet is tucked under that mattress, and in the first picture, they're touching the wall, and are off the bed at their backs. Maybe 24" wide.

[DGayle]

I shared a room with my sister growing up. We had bunk beds, though went back and forth on the stacked and double bed. It's not that weird and there is nothing wrong with it. All my friends growing up shared rooms too. They were two sets of sisters as well. One set was from a family of nine. I just do not see what is so strange about room sharing. I think the majority of children across the globe share a room with someone and the majority of adults grew up sharing a bedroom too.

The shelves as beds though...yeah, you need to stop having a children. That's a sign you have too many.

No one's against siblings sharing rooms. I shared with my brother, by choice. Our parents occasionally made me take the other bedroom. We liked staying up late and talking, and then would be tired early in the morning. When they'd put us in our own rooms, one of the other would sneak so we could sleep near each other and talk.

The problem is when kids are so packed in that they don't have any personal space and are warehoused.

[Palimpsest]

So if you own a house built when wardrobes were typical instead of built-in closets, that you can't rent that unit? The definition for bedroom I've read is that it must have a window and a door that shuts it off from common areas of the unit. Otherwise most older homes wouldn't be legal to rent simply because the rooms all lack built-in closets, which would make it a 0-bedroom dwelling.

Probably not. Eh, that HUD definition of bedrooms needing closets/storage space was from memory. I may be wrong and that won't be the first time. :P

The door to shut it of from common areas and the window for egress are fire safety regulations. The closet definition is to stop people calling an actual closet a bedroom, IIRC. I'm sure there's room for exceptions in the HUD regs. for older homes, or a landlord could easily build one in.

Thinking of closets, people definitely had fewer clothes in the past. Both of the old houses (one late 1800s and one 1938) we've owned, and many even older ones we looked at when we last moved, had original built in "closets," that would fit the definition. They are less than 12" deep so you can hang a 5 or 6 things sideways on a very short rod and a few more things on pegs. I put shelves in one of mine instead. Building extra deeper bedroom closets (not walk in) when we moved in was easy -- we just dry-walled in some wall space and added doors. No big deal for a landlord.

ETA. The HUD regulations are supposed to stop landlords from being slumlords for the protection of tenants and to stop tenants endangering their families. Back to Emily of <$1000. She and Daniel moved in to a one bedroom apartment when she was pregnant with baby#1 and then had 2 more babies. She was trying to have 3 little boys sleep in a 6x8 closet. It had a door and technically a window - but the window opened onto an inside hallway so no outside egress. I suspected that she didn't have the landlord do needed repairs because she was afraid he would see the conditions try to evict them for overcrowding and general filth and clutter. So, when the bathroom light broke and they couldn't fix it they balanced a desk lamp on the towel rail right next to the shower. Seriously!

[polecat]

Largely out of necessity. If you don't have access to birth control, chances are you can't afford a larger home when you've got so many mouths to feed. In rural areas where there's a lot of sharing, there's more open space, and kids can claim some space as their own. In places where families are packed closer together, you often get slums with all its many, many problems.

Just because many NONindustrial countries see this as normal doesn't mean we should. In a lot of nonindustrial countries, vaccines are the exception. Who wants to argue against vaccines in the first world based on what the third world does?

Lots of people in the US also have room-sharing out of necessity or preference (birth control or not). We have three kids and three bedrooms. Two kids share a room. Theirs is actually bigger than my husband's and mine. They are perfectly happy with that arrangement, and at least two to three nights of the week, the third kid bunks in WITH them, sleeping either in the bed with one of his siblings or on the floor in a sleeping bag, or the second kid moves into the third kid's room for a change of pace.

It's not a horrible thing for kids to share a room, and many of them enjoy it (mine certainly seem to). I'd also say that it is an entirely human experience that has been practiced from the dawn of our species. Again, I am not defending THIS particular situation, in which these kids are all but warehoused and in what I'd consider substandard and potentially dangerous situations. But I don't see a damn thing wrong with kids sharing rooms.

[Walking Cat Bed]

I hated sharing a room growing up, but in my situation I'm the middle kid, with a sibling five years older and another six years younger. And, because of my older sister's "problems" (she was trying to break out of fundieland before any of us realized what we were dealing with), when we shared a room, it was more to keep her "out of trouble". When we moved to a new house, she had the big room in the basement, but would sneak out through the ground-level windows. And, well, I was shut out of the room on a regular basis when her boyfriend would visit or she was talking to a friend on the phone. I didn't have my own consistent space or any real privacy until I was 15. Military/college room situations weren't worse, but I still prefer having my own space with a closing door.

(I shared with my younger brother when he was still in a crib; once he was mobile he had his own room.)

So, in theory, I don't oppose room-sharing -- IF it's the best option available. If the kids enjoy sharing space, parents are using space effectively, and kids aren't being packed and stacked like boxes in a warehouse, sure. And if the parents aren't keeping the biggest room for themselves and making several kids share each (small) bedroom.

[It'sFunToRun]

I hated sharing a room growing up, but in my situation I'm the middle kid, with a sibling five years older and another six years younger. And, because of my older sister's "problems" (she was trying to break out of fundieland before any of us realized what we were dealing with), when we shared a room, it was more to keep her "out of trouble". When we moved to a new house, she had the big room in the basement, but would sneak out through the ground-level windows. And, well, I was shut out of the room on a regular basis when her boyfriend would visit or she was talking to a friend on the phone. I didn't have my own consistent space or any real privacy until I was 15. Military/college room situations weren't worse, but I still prefer having my own space with a closing door.

(I shared with my younger brother when he was still in a crib; once he was mobile he had his own room.)

So, in theory, I don't oppose room-sharing -- IF it's the best option available. If the kids enjoy sharing space, parents are using space effectively, and kids aren't being packed and stacked like boxes in a warehouse, sure. And if the parents aren't keeping the biggest room for themselves and making several kids share each (small) bedroom.

Your big sister sounds awesome. How is she today?

[FiddleDD]

While some of the options pictured in this thread have been predictably horrible (eek to the shelves!) there are some amazing triple bunk designs on Pinterest. If there's a decent sized room and you have a spouse or good friend with carpentry skills you could jam a bunch of kids in the same room. :lol:

I think a lot of room sharing depends on personality as well as introverted/extroverted status. I'm an introvert who loves when a particular friend comes to visit because I don't have to be alone but we also don't feel like we need to talk to one another all the time. So we ignore each other 50% of the time which means that even though I'm not alone, I don't go crazy.

[MamaJunebug]

That was Kim and Perry Coghlan, inashoe blog, formerly of Vision Forum.

Apologies if this is already been mentioned, but leave us never forget that while these children slept in this type of comfort, mom and dad's big Idol Doug Phillips and his 8 children lived in 7000 ft.². Including the indoor swimming pool. Just sayin'.

[salsa]

The one nestled in the corner looks much less claustrophobia-inducing, but it would be hard to make up - especially the lowest bunk. I can't imagine having to crawl to the foot of the bed to tuck in the covers around that file cabinet-looking thing.

[docmom]

I'd do a triple bunk bed, but only if they ended up something like this so the kid has room to sit up without bumping their head.

Also, they'd be standard twin mattresses, not what appear to be toddler mattresses.

Those are really cute, well-made bunks but if the window is the only one then I wouldn't have my children sleep there. It's not an egress window. The room appears to be in the attic and it's really important that attic bedrooms have a window you can get out of in case of fire.

I have no problems with kids sharing rooms- my kids have their own rooms but play musical beds every night- but I have a real problem sacrificing safety for the sake of having tons of kids.