On FB - How many bunk beds can you stack?

[DGayle]

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.

AGAIN, no one, myself included, is against sharing, and I even talked about how my brother and I loved sharing. The problem is when kids are packed in like sardines and have no personal space. A couple kids can work it out. When you've got 4, 5, 6, 9 kids crammed into one room, there's a problem. Stop having kids and just tossing them into a warehouse.

[Mama Mia]

AGAIN, no one, myself included, is against sharing, and I even talked about how my brother and I loved sharing. The problem is when kids are packed in like sardines and have no personal space. A couple kids can work it out. When you've got 4, 5, 6, 9 kids crammed into one room, there's a problem. Stop having kids and just tossing them into a warehouse.

I don't think 4 kids in a room is really all that unusual or that kids in that situation would necessarily feel cramped. And I know several people who will have a couple of little kids in with the parents. A lot of it is what you're used to.

More than 5 and you'd need a decent sized room to fit the beds and clothes, but even a small bedroom with two sets of bunks isn't a problem generally, IME.

[SassyPants]

For me, the cramming of preschool kids into pack-n-plays and the beds devoid of linens is a bigger issue- {in the Duggar home}.

[DGayle]

I don't think 4 kids in a room is really all that unusual or that kids in that situation would necessarily feel cramped. And I know several people who will have a couple of little kids in with the parents. A lot of it is what you're used to.

More than 5 and you'd need a decent sized room to fit the beds and clothes, but even a small bedroom with two sets of bunks isn't a problem generally, IME.

There are four kids in that bedroom. Do you think it's fine? No personal space, no privacy. So chance to go have alone-time or collect your thoughts.

[lilith]

My daughter (10) has been sharing with her two younger brothers for longer than I (or she) would like , as renovations and associated council approvals drag on. The boys (7 and 9) are in bunk beds on one side of the master bedroom, we've made a kind of wall with her dresser and wardrobe, and she has her single bed on the other side.

It's certainly not ideal, especially as she edges towards puberty, but many family situations are less than perfect - owning a home in Sydney that's less than a 90 minute commute from work costs a small fortune and renovations take time and resources.

Many many kids get by in less than ideal circumstances. Our standards have changed dramatically within a few generations - very few family homes built before the 90s around here have more than 3 bedrooms, and most families have historically had more than two kids, and have often had extended family living in the home too.

It really really irritates me when the ideals of affluent middle class families become legislated or expected of the general population.

I'm not advocating LiaS style warehousing of children, but the vast majority of families are just trying to get by, allocating as much space as they can to each child.

My daughter should get her own room within a few months (fingers crossed) but the boys will be sharing the master bedroom til their sister leaves home, we will be in the second bedroom and Partner's brother will be in the third. It's that or not own a home from which we can access our work and still have me home for the kids after school.

[theCR]

Reading this thread all I can think about is the bunk bed scene in Step-brothers

http://youtu.be/ulwUkaKjgY0

[thoughtful]

I forgot to post this from Kim's blog.

If you read the previous ones, the shelving was supposedly temporary, and they were going to build Navy-style wooden bunks with storage (which might or might not have been more secure, but still would have been very crowded). That was in October 2009.

But, as of September, 2010, they still had nine children sleeping in that room with the shelves (two of them shared one shelf):

Yes, the rumors are true. Nine of our children share one moderately sized room. We have a 3rd bedroom in our house, but they begged us to let them turn it into a dedicated library and we agreed, glad to have clutter-catching bookcases gone from every other room of the house.

inashoe.com/2010/09/4-moms-open-house-linky-bedrooms-part-2/

Those plywood floors were unfinished, and the shelves were not secured to anything.

And the leg-humpers mostly ooohed and ahhhhed.

Sharing is one thing, but that's just nuts.

While looking for Kim's crappy idea, I saw lots of pics of ways to share sleeping space. This arrangement looks comfy and safe, unless I'm missing something:

It would need a large room, though.

[Feberin]

Many many kids get by in less than ideal circumstances. Our standards have changed dramatically within a few generations - very few family homes built before the 90s around here have more than 3 bedrooms, and most families have historically had more than two kids, and have often had extended family living in the home too.

I think this is one of my issues with the whole idea that kids sharing a bedroom is something horrible. My mother grew up one of seven children and shared a room with two sisters. My grandparents were very well off and probably could have afforded a larger house but at the time (1950s) I don't think there was the belief that we have these days that all children need their own bedrooms. Obviously LiaS style stacking children into a very small room on narrow and short bunks is appalling but two or three or even four children sharing a room doesn't seem like the end of the world to me especially if it's a decent sized room.

It's also not just in third world countries where it's typical for children to share a room. The United States has the biggest average housing size in the world with Australia coming in second place. I would assume that there are many families in other areas of the world that have more than one or two children and are making do with a smaller home. I also think the area where you live is an influencing factor if you live in a place where the cost per square foot is really high then room sharing if you have more than one child might be a necessity unless you're very wealthy.

[Mama Mia]

There are four kids in that bedroom. Do you think it's fine? No personal space, no privacy. So chance to go have alone-time or collect your thoughts.

No I don't think that particular room is safe, because those shelving bunks look incredibly dangerous. They need rails, especially being so narrow! Yikes! What I found mind boggling reading the post, was that they actually have another bedroom - but decided to turn it into a library :shock:

This is what I would do, given the following criteria:

7x9 bedroom, door and window on opposite short walls.

4 school age kids

Limited Budget ( unfortunate because omg at all the gorgeous pinterest stuff!)

Primary concern of everyone is having their own beds/privacy ( there's a lot that would be more workable if shared beds was ok, but I'm thinking that wouldn't be something you'd go for)

I would get two 36inch wide bunk beds with storage ( some are 39, that would be awfully tight). And place them across from each other on the long walls. I would add curtains strung along each top and bottom bunk. The kids could pick their own for individuality. Kitchen curtains or flat sheets work great, require little or no sewing and are cheap. I would add a tall thin dresser or shelves at the end of each bed, if it didn't come with it.

Theres s plenty of cute stuff out there. They would have virtually no floor space, but would each have their own cozy little nook. Even brand new you could do the whole thing for around $800 if you look for sales, including bedding etc, or a couple hundred bucks if you got the beds off of Craigslist.

Personally I would probably have gone for a double sofa futon on the bottom with a full bunk on top, with two kids per bed, to give more " room" in the room. But it would depend on ages and personalities of the kids.

[church_of_dog]

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!

The real estate rules (IIRC) say that to be counted as a bedroom you have to have a closet (and a window, I presume, but I had forgotten that one until I read it here, but it makes sense). The closet has to be "attached" to the room but it doesn't have to be original-built. So you could put a closet bar in the corner, or put a free-standing wardrobe in and then bolt it to the wall, and those would count legally as closets, at least for real estate transactions.

The house I own was advertised as a two bedroom, but the second "bedroom" was really a utility room that contained the back door and the electrical breaker panel! But there was a closet bar in that room because a teen boy had been using it as a bedroom, so it legally counted as a bedroom. But this was really a 1-bedroom house when built, and in terms of size and function.

[Mama Mia]

Oops did my space figuring wrong. In a 7 by 9 room you'd need to forgo the end dressers/shelves and have the bunks along the short walls. :embarrassed: I know no one cares. But it was bugging me. Because I'm a dork like that.

[Maggie Mae]

It's so weird when I post here lately, I feel like everything I'm saying is crazy anti government conspiracy theories.

But OMG I'm so sick of overreaching building codes. We had to rebuild our (dry) cabin this summer after the original was lost in a wildfire. The original was built in the 80s, by hand, and my SO told me all about living in tents and scaring off bears and bathing in the 50 degree lake. So we wanted to rebuild and do it ourselves. Only we can't anymore. Everything needs a permit and codes and proof and requirements. Why does a dry cabin with fly in access only need to meet rise and run requirements? Why do I need to pay for an inspector? It's basically a porch with a room attached.

And in buying house to live in, so annoying. Features I like aren't "up to code" and have to be removed. It's like at some point someone decided that everyone needs to live in boring McMansions that come from the same designer/developer.

[salex]

I know people mock the Duggars home as a tinker toy house... however, IF I had been going to have umpty nine kids, it is quite likely we'd have built something like it. Open span metal buildings are inexpensive to buy and build the frame and the interiors can be configured in almost unlimited ways. A 50x100 building today costs about 25K and a 100x100 about 55K.

IF we were going to have all the kids we could, we'd have bought out in the country within 30 minutes of hubs job (as many of his co-workers did and as we considered when we thought we'd have one or two kids) and have a minimum of 5 acres, preferably where a house had already been to avoid having to pay to run electric to a homesite. We'd have designed a floor plan for the future buildout and let the rest of the building be unfinished until the next planned buildout (sort of like a really oversized attached garage).

My inlaws used a butler type building for some very nice apartments (and we helped on part of that construction), my current offices are in an office park that is similar to this and I know people who have Barndominiums in Texas Hill country, so I know they can be nice. This would have provided enough space for a certain amount of privacy for everyone.

Hubs and I like a lot of space. We both grew up in large farm houses and currently the two of us probably share more square ft than the whole family shared in the house with the costco shelf beds. I don't think each kid has to have their own room, but I do think there should be plenty of space.

[Mama Mia]

Salex, I agree with the general idea of the Tinker Toy house. And like your reasoning regarding how to build. Man, I had no idea those houses were so cheap to build!

The thing that drives me absolutely insane about the Tinkertoy house is WHY, WHY, WHY would they put in that death trap open hallway and staircase when they had eleventh billion little kids and knew they would have eleventy billion more toddlers ?!? :angry-banghead: :angry-banghead:

It's not like it's a house they bought that was great in other ways, but had this awful hallway/staircase design to deal with. No. They did that on purpose. I can just picture my kids as toddlers scaling those railings and toppling over to that hard floor. Or a 4 year old putting on a cape and trying to fly off of there. Agggghhhhh WHY?

[calimojo]

I see lots of houses with that open hallway or Catwalk design. When i see it, I always wonder about the safety, but it seems popular and I have never heard of any injuries associated with it.

Don't most houses have stairwells? Even many ranch style homes have a stairwell to a basement. So I don't know why you object to the stairwell. If anything thing it is out in the open where it is likely to be observed, as opposed to off in the background where a kid could play and get hurt and be undiscovered for a while.

My biggest issue with the stairwell is that despite it's central location and the fact that people are always around, no one seems to pay any attention to it or to the little ones crawling on it. We have a big stairwell in my house that was gated when the kids were little. And once they got older and didn't need the gate, it was still observed constantly for safe use. No jumping, skipping, pushing, riding of tricycles down the stairs, etc.

I am always amazed at how the only people that seem to be watching those crazy little kids are the Cameramen.

[Mama Mia]

Most houses I've seen with stairs, the stairs are enclosed, usually on both sides for most of the way, by a full or half wall. Also, most staircases are going up the standard 8 feet, the Duggar home looks, to me, to have higher ceilings, in addition to the open space. I haven't seen any homes with that kind of cat walk before. I do have one kid who lives in a second floor apartment that has that kind of open staircase.

I just don't get why, if you have the LUXURY of getting to design your own home, to fit your particular needs- why wouldn't you use a safer design when you know you are going to have tons of toddlers?

[ViolaSebastian]

The thing that gets me about the TTH is how LOUD that thing must be. No acoustic tiles, no carpet, ceramic tile floor, open floor plan...there is just nothing to suck up that noise.

[Maggie Mae]

The thing that gets me about the TTH is how LOUD that thing must be. No acoustic tiles, no carpet, ceramic tile floor, open floor plan...there is just nothing to suck up that noise.

Just people!

[Maggie Mae]

I know people mock the Duggars home as a tinker toy house... however, IF I had been going to have umpty nine kids, it is quite likely we'd have built something like it. Open span metal buildings are inexpensive to buy and build the frame and the interiors can be configured in almost unlimited ways. A 50x100 building today costs about 25K and a 100x100 about 55K.

IF we were going to have all the kids we could, we'd have bought out in the country within 30 minutes of hubs job (as many of his co-workers did and as we considered when we thought we'd have one or two kids) and have a minimum of 5 acres, preferably where a house had already been to avoid having to pay to run electric to a homesite. We'd have designed a floor plan for the future buildout and let the rest of the building be unfinished until the next planned buildout (sort of like a really oversized attached garage).

My inlaws used a butler type building for some very nice apartments (and we helped on part of that construction), my current offices are in an office park that is similar to this and I know people who have Barndominiums in Texas Hill country, so I know they can be nice. This would have provided enough space for a certain amount of privacy for everyone.

Hubs and I like a lot of space. We both grew up in large farm houses and currently the two of us probably share more square ft than the whole family shared in the house with the costco shelf beds. I don't think each kid has to have their own room, but I do think there should be plenty of space.

I think their should be space too, but does that space need to indoors and in a bedroom? Plenty of people only use their bedrooms for sleeping. We have a pretty small house. Most homes in my area are smaller. Smaller is less to heat, less to clean. we have no plans to move once we have kids. I'm sure people will have issues with that, but there is never going to a decision made that everyone agrees with

[DGayle]

Usually less-than-idea circumstances happen through no fault of your own after having kids, not the exact opposite of having a less-than-ideal situation because your'e choosing to keep having more kids to toss in there.

LiaS isn't stuck shelving the kids because she had adequate space, then lost her home when the economy took a downturn. She is choosing to do this.

Also everyone saying that we shouldn't really have a problem with no personal space because other countries don't always have much, and the US has had times in history where it was normal (guys, a lot of things were considered normal that we have actually outlawed, and a lot of other things are just plain looked down on), means we shouldn't worry about the Rodriguises, even though it looks like they lost their home and didn't have a choice. By crying "unfortunate circumstances," we need to stop talking down about what they're doing. Are we going to do that? Nope. The difference between that and this is that most of you haven't lived in an RV any length of time, and so don't want what you've gone through to be called less-than-ideal and something that shouldn't be supported when the parents have any choice at all, like not having more kids.

[feministxtian]

The hubs and I had a 2300 square foot house for just the two of us. I've been looking at houses here and really want something that is at least 2000 square feet. I'm just used to the elbow room, where if I want to get away from him or go watch something on TV that he doesn't want to watch, I have the space to do so. But, yes, I do think of the kids/grandkids coming to visit and would like to have room for them too. I prefer an open floor plan house...sort of the great room/country kitchen concept. It suits our lifestyle. But...we can afford that.

Once upon a time I had three girls sharing one room and two boys sharing another. The bedrooms were huge though so there was plenty of room for the kids and their stuff. We also had a finished basement that was their playroom and a big family room that had more than enough room for the kids.

[Mama Mia]

Usually less-than-idea circumstances happen through no fault of your own after having kids, not the exact opposite of having a less-than-ideal situation because your'e choosing to keep having more kids to toss in there.

LiaS isn't stuck shelving the kids because she had adequate space, then lost her home when the economy took a downturn. She is choosing to do this.

Also everyone saying that we shouldn't really have a problem with no personal space because other countries don't always have much, and the US has had times in history where it was normal (guys, a lot of things were considered normal that we have actually outlawed, and a lot of other things are just plain looked down on), means we shouldn't worry about the Rodriguises, even though it looks like they lost their home and didn't have a choice. By crying "unfortunate circumstances," we need to stop talking down about what they're doing. Are we going to do that? Nope. The difference between that and this is that most of you haven't lived in an RV any length of time, and so don't want what you've gone through to be called less-than-ideal and something that shouldn't be supported when the parents have any choice at all, like not having more kids.

I think lots and lots and lots of people purposefully have children when they are in a less than ideal situation. The vast majority of the world is never going to be comfortably middle class. That doesn't mean they shouldn't have children. Many poor families plan their children -- because many people are poor, and still have every right to have children. Many people live in high cost areas where even if you have a middle class income, you're going to live in relatively crowded situations if you want children. Many other people have extended family living with them, by choice, in less than ideal housing situations - because that's what's culturally desirable for them ( or just a family value with no particular cultural attachment) .

There is nothing objectively "better" about parents who work and live in a 3 bedroom house with their 2 children and pay $1,800 a month in childcare costs, and the same family who moves Aunt, Uncle and their two kids in to the house and one of the adults stays home to provide childcare for all of them.

I think you are assuming that some things are objectively important, when it's really a subjective opinion.

Of course at some point you reach an area where a family really, really needs to change their living situation - whether they want to or not - and many more families who would gladly improve their housing situation if they had the funds. Government and charitable programs can help with that ( or well, they can try, with extremely limited funds!). But until you get to that point there is a whole lot of range in what's acceptable and desirable to people.

[Gwendolyn Nightshadow]

Is it just me or are there no ladders to access the upper beds/shelves? Am I just not seeing it? Are the

kids supposed to use the bunks/shelves as footholds? Because that would be the dangerous topping on the health and safety risk sundae.

Also, these fundies really do not think ahead to when their children are older and larger do they? You might be able to cram three <10 yr olds into that space, but it's simply not going to work when they're teenagers. This isn't a slur on bringing up a family in a small house - I hate the idea that you have to have a certain amount of money or a certain type of dwelling to be a good parent. What's wrong is thinking that you're better than anyone else because you choose to live this way; that it's more "godly" for

the mother not to work, and you're too good to receive benefits. I'm a strong believer that there should be no stigma to taking assistance when you need it. Those poor, poor kids.

[Brightonbelle]

Just for interest, here's a link to the bunkbeds built by the Radfords - they are the biggest family in Britain with 16 children. Not fundie at all hence probably not mentioned here

theradfordfamily.co.uk/triple-bunk-beds/