Sleeping on shelving??

[haveapicniclife]

My husband and I have owned our home in San Antonio since 1993. It was built nearly 60 years ago in a near-Northside neighborhood (about a mile south of North Star Mall, for those of you who know the city). It is a decent sized house on a third of an acre in a middle class neighborhood.

We have had rats off and on for years.

Well, to clarify, our rat problem has lessened significantly (although not 100%) since we put a metal roof on our house, eliminating many of the openings to the outside, but they still get in from time to time and we hear them in the attic. We used to do the spring traps until, with Darwin's help, we succeeded in developing a strain of rats so resourceful that they could get the peanut butter from the trap without ever disturbing the business part of it. We have since moved on to poison which is effective. If only the rats were more choosy about where they died. My husband and I are not bound by gender roles in general but I make an exception for rodent carcass removal--that's his job.

Oh, we have dogs too, but the dogs don't seem nearly as upset about the rats as we are. Cats are not an option as both my daughter and I are allergic.

Just wanted to confirm from firsthand knowledge that rats are endemic in San Antonio and that they aren't limited to the poorer neighborhoods.

Yeah, my sister lived in Alamo Heights and they definitely had rats. I lived in Boerne for 20+ years and we never had any at our house, but I know other people did.

[Brainsample]

Or maybe the kids reacted with enthusiasm in the beginning because it looked like something new, different, and fun. (Think of all the kids who think they'd like to camp out in the backyard until they actually try it.) Perhaps the Shoe kids did enjoy it for a night or two or however long it took before the room got too hot, someone bumped her head, or one of the top bunk kids fell off and got hurt. But by then, it was too late; the children had already "agreed" that they wanted to sleep on shelves from now on.

In the anti-cult literature, this is called Bounded Choice. http://undermoregrace.blogspot.com/2009 ... nt-of.html

[yetanothermeg]

Those are federal guidelines for HUD housing, not rental housing, not privately owned houses, but houses funded by HUD. You are making the guidelines for HUD construction to be federal law of the land with criminal penalties.

Correct that those are guidelines for HUD housing. Occupants per house is something that can be covered under zoning ordinances, which are enacted on a local level, not the federal level. Some communities do limit the number of occupants per dwelling unit, but these ordinances apply to unrelated occupants. So you can cram as many kids as you want into a house, as long as they are your own kids. Cram a bunch of unrelated college kids into the same house and you may have a problem.

[Annette]

Wow that is lazy! How in the world can any healthy person not typically get their own water or purse or take care of their little children? I have one toddler and feel like I never get to sit down on days that I'm home with him alone. I guess my problem is that I should have 9 more so I can sit around like a lazy lump. :roll:

That pisses me off. My mom was like that. She sat around and had us fetch and carry everything to her. That's how I burned my arm with hot coffee at age 6 because she had me learn to run the pot, pour it and serve it to her. I was too short to reach anything. I climbed on the counter to do this. I got a big blistery burn, and she yelled at me for holding my arm carefully against my body in public. Didn't want anyone to think she was a bad mom. :roll:

[Wolfie]

Those are federal guidelines for HUD housing, not rental housing, not privately owned houses, but houses funded by HUD. You are making the guidelines for HUD construction to be federal law of the land with criminal penalties.

Correct that those are guidelines for HUD housing. Occupants per house is something that can be covered under zoning ordinances, which are enacted on a local level, not the federal level. Some communities do limit the number of occupants per dwelling unit, but these ordinances apply to unrelated occupants. So you can cram as many kids as you want into a house, as long as they are your own kids. Cram a bunch of unrelated college kids into the same house and you may have a problem.

Some communities do apply it to rental housing, no matter if it is a family or not. It is up to the landlord to enforce it, and I think it probably is enforced more in the "nicer" apartments than the lower income ones. A neighbor of mine in my first apartment had one daughter by her ex husband, a toddler daughter by a man who she had an affair with, and twin daughters by a loser I went to school with. (she was about 10 years older than us) It was in a nice area, and when the twins were a few months old she had to move because the landlord had given her notice because of too many people in the two bedroom apartment.

(I heard after she'd moved out that she lost custody of the middle daughter, and that the father had mainly used the existance of the twins to prove he had more time to care for her, but that's another story)

[SimplyMe]

I had never looked at that page before and am completely stunned! Shouldn't that be against to law to have kids stacked on shelves like that? And the poor kid at the bottom, oh my goodness that is just awful. That's not even a room they are in either, it looks like a partioned part of the house or something, the walls don't reach the ceiling and it doesn't even have floors, just plywood. Wow.

[amie]

..........

[emmiedahl]

I don't believe for a second her kids 'begged' her to do this (referring to the in a shoe chick). They don't know any better and also know they don't have a freaking choice. Live in misery or adapt and learn to accept.

They are trained from birth via Pearl methods to keep sweet and to be happy about whatever you are given. Dissent is not something these kids are allowed, so of course they acted happy. They have had the spirit beaten out of them. They are an ATI success story.

My younger kids would love this idea, but my nine year old would be very vocal in her resistance. If I suggested this to one of my teenagers, the answer would be "Are you kidding?" followed by "Fuck no. I'll stay at a friend's house until you can fit a proper bed in my room." I have a great teenager, but that's just too much to ask.

[emmiedahl]

Some communities do apply it to rental housing, no matter if it is a family or not. It is up to the landlord to enforce it, and I think it probably is enforced more in the "nicer" apartments than the lower income ones. A neighbor of mine in my first apartment had one daughter by her ex husband, a toddler daughter by a man who she had an affair with, and twin daughters by a loser I went to school with. (she was about 10 years older than us) It was in a nice area, and when the twins were a few months old she had to move because the landlord had given her notice because of too many people in the two bedroom apartment.

Those are not just HUD laws; they are the standard for healthy, safe housing in the US. People have been prosecuted for not obeying them with adults (like when you read about 20+ illegal immigrants crammed in a small room). I know we are reluctant to get involved in other people's families in this country, but the LiaS family is a good example of a family that needs intervention.

[youshouldknowx4]

Again, I ask, does anyone know where she lives? Tell me where and I will make the call to cps. Something terrible is going to happen when those shelves break.

[Alecto]

Again, I ask, does anyone know where she lives? Tell me where and I will make the call to cps. Something terrible is going to happen when those shelves break.

Discussing her address, ect is a violation of the site's TOU.

[forever ago]

When I lived in the apartment, before I moved to this house, my sister and I shared a room because in less than 10 years of being married, my parents had somehow accumulated enough crap to have to use one of the bedrooms for storage. Of course this was a common problem with families in that apartment complex, since a lot of them had lived in houses before then and weren't planning on staying in the apartments forever.

Then again, I was lucky enough to only have one sibling close to my age (2 years younger, and my older sister is more than 20 years older than me...) Sharing a room with one or two siblings is fine, but 10 in one room? And actually converting the only other available space into a library? Shit, as much as I'd love to convert a room in my* house into a library, everyone in said house having a place to sleep is top priority.

*not really my house, my parents' house, though once I do have a place of my own I'm totally using one room as a library!

Cramming that many people into that one space is not safe at all, especially when they're sleeping on shelving. I'd be terrified of them eventually being too big to be sleeping on it, let alone even sitting on it for a short time. That's a horrible accident waiting to happen. Just buy some bunk beds from a yard sale/thrift store, they're much safer and much nicer and you don't need to make special mattresses for them.

[forever ago]

Currently eight children and one adult daughter (they're between the ages of 3 and 18) occupy that bedroom (I assume the 1-year-old still bunks in his parents' room). Unless they plan to marry off their daughters soon after they reach the age of 18 (or God willing, He shuts down their baby making shop), it is conceviable that 10, 11, 12+ children/young adults will occupy that space eventually. Or will the parents buck up, act like parents (if, in fact, it's true it was the children's decision to be stacked like cordwood, in order to free up the third bedroom to create a "library"), and insist those living arrangements are unacceptable?

I would never, ever jam an 18 year old in the same sleeping space as a 3 year old, unless the arrangement was temporary. Good lord. Maybe it's because I'm 19. But still, really? That's horrible judgement. And none of those kids ever gets like, 5 seconds to themselves in that arrangement. WTF.

[tabitha2]

Kim says bedrooms are for sleeping and they aren't encouraged to stay in their room so they don't really spend time in the bedroom-they usually go outside on the acres of land they own for privacy.One daughter has a cozy nook under the house where she goes for privacy-I think she set up a hammock.

[TMS]

I was just thinking: my dog gets a better bed than those LIAS kids. He sleeps in a crate, and the rule of thumb for picking out a crate is that the crate is large enough for the dog to stand up and turn around. My dog can do that, and he can stretch out and sleep in whatever position he wants. He really does love his crate too, since he is a *dog*, and most dogs enjoy their own private little "cave." But those poor kids can't even sit up in bed because they'd bang their noggins on the metal shelving above!

[FloraDoraDolly]

I was just thinking: my dog gets a better bed than those LIAS kids. He sleeps in a crate, and the rule of thumb for picking out a crate is that the crate is large enough for the dog to stand up and turn around. My dog can do that, and he can stretch out and sleep in whatever position he wants. He really does love his crate too, since he is a *dog*, and most dogs enjoy their own private little "cave." But those poor kids can't even sit up in bed because they'd bang their noggins on the metal shelving above!

That room is like a puppy mill for human beings. The main difference is, if you treat dogs like that, the humane society or the Animal Cops will come and take them away.

[MLizabeth]

Do you really think this is CPS worthy? My neighbors were known drug dealers and users with a pack of kids. The CPS van was at their house at least once a day for months for issues including a toddler ingesting drugs that had been left lying around the house, and the kids remained in the home. Even with the shelving bunk beds you could do a lot worse than the LIfe in a Shoe's. And really, my hippie 1970s childhood was just as weird, materially deprived, and potentially hazardous as anything going on at LIAS.

Also I hate it when people start harassing fundie bloggers, because then they close down and I am denied my fix.

[gustava]

Hate the "beds" but they are very sturdy and will never, ever break. I took at look at them at big box store yesterday.

[snarkykitty]

The Life in a Shoe bunk bed post pissed me off a little, in part for philosophical reasons: It strikes me as stupid to intentionally have so many kids you need to stack them four to a bunk, two shelving units (one on each side) in one tiny room with a single window. A lot of people around the world live in cramped quarters, though, and so it's not that big a deal in the grand scheme of things that LioS' kids have such a tight arrangement.

(My husband's comment upon seeing LioS' kids' room: "What the fuck? Are those...storage shelves?")

One of the blogs LioS linked, however - now that pisses me off: raisingolives.com/2010/09/4-moms-bedrooms-part-2

The parents have this massive, well-furnished private love-nest they call a master bedroom, and yet their three oldest daughters sleep side by side on little cots that are crammed into what amounts to a windowless storage closet. The other kids, boys and girls, at least have actual bunk beds and decent furniture in their rooms (which have windows) - but they're still all crammed together while their parents take over by far the biggest bedroom in the house and reserve it for just two people.

Aren't bedrooms required to have at least one window? I remember when we were younger, and my parents looking at houses, one had a windowless bedroom that was accessible only via another bedroom - essentially a huge walk-in closet was changed to a bedroom. They wouldn't let it be sold as a 4-bedroom because that other "bedroom" had no windows".

I've said it before - what happens during a fire in any of these plasces? LIAS's nine kids in one room with a single window half-blocked by a fan, and one door - it gives me shivers to think about.

And these "Olives" girls laying on COTS? Way to support growing spines and limbs.

[snarkykitty]

What do you do if someone is sick or injured? I guess you could switch bunks around, and mom could lay on the floor to attend to the one on the bottom bunk.

I also wonder about tipping of the unit because the bottom is not always weighted, but they could have easily bolted the upper part of the shelving to the wall and hope that they did.

I guess if you're trusting that your girls will be moving out eventually, it is seen as only temporary, too.

I tend to be a little crunchy about this kind of thing, because the kids have grown up with this kind of arrangement, and it is not like they were taken out of huge bedrooms and put on shelving. People live in hot climates without air and sleep in hammocks or on woven mats on the ground. China is full of people who use a public toilet which is shared by hundreds of others because they don't have facilities of their own at home. You get accustomed to whatever you've been exposed to and acclimated to, and if this is all you've experienced, it is not a hardship. I disliked the climate, but I grew up in the NE, so it was a shock, but it is normal and "feels like home" if this is what you know.

The question is whether or not a situation is safe.

If one of the girls had a communicable illness or disability or something like bad asthma, this could be problematic. Even so, I don't know that, as a nurse, that I'd call that environment unsafe if all of those girls are healthy. If I were called in there to do a health inspection or something like that (which is a part of home care nursing anyway which is required of the job), I would be concerned about safety of the girls getting in and out of the shelves without something like a safe ladder. It's easy to miss your footing if you're using the edge of a shelf as a step. I'd suggest a narrow stationary ladder from and secured to ceiling to floor at the top end of the "bunks." You can say that the Navy does this, but these are men who have passed physical training requirements and are in fit health. I don't think that you can argue this same thing for growing girls.

It would be great motivation to get your girls up and out of the house, however, to marry or get a career and get out of there.

Sorry for the double post, but it was stated on the blog (I can't find it now) that the shelves have not been bolted to the wall.

[IReallyAmHopewell]

It must be in a Gothard seminar or the "making brothers/sisters best friends" book that they tell parent one bedroom is best--or, if necessary, one per "gender"..... Even with the huge rooms the Duggars have this is silly. But to cram kids in on SHELVING??? I really wonder..........

[Brainsample]

Sorry for the double post, but it was stated on the blog (I can't find it now) that the shelves have not been bolted to the wall.

I have some of that same shelving in my kitchen. I have some very heavy items stored in bins on the bottom shelf that I'd prefer to keep elsewhere because the instructions stated that the bottom shelf must be weighted to avoid tipping of the unit. If two kids are on the top and the two kids on the bottom get out of bed early, you've got a potential problem when the girls on the top levels get up and climb down.

I hope Kim or VF Interns read this and pass on the info to the family:

1.) For the safety of your children, at the very least, you need to fasten those shelves to the walls at the top to keep them from tipping. You may not have had a problem before now, but it is a safety consideration for your children. You could do this in a couple of different ways, and it wouldn't have to be thick brackets or anything, but you need to get that unit fixed to a couple of studs in the wall.

2.) There's a big issue which involves tipping, also, considering that there seems (from the photos) to be no ladder. The stress on the shelving unit also puts stress on it when the girls on the top tiers get in and out. I'd get some experienced carpenter or good construction worker to come in and look at it for you.

I could see someone building a narrow ladder that could be fixed to both ceiling and floor, flush to the head of the unit and perpendicular to the long side of the unit to save space. The floor is plywood, so you don't have to worry about doing major damage to flooring. The girls could even put hooks on it and use it to hang odds and ends. Then, you're not only saving the unit from the stress on it from tipping, you're also giving the girls better footing when they get in and out. I've awakened quite sick in the middle of the night many times as a kid and could barely make it out of bed, let alone down a shelf without a ladder. On a day when I felt well, that would be fine, but I don't know how I could have done this when awaking at night with a fever and super sick.

[bananacat]

I would never, ever jam an 18 year old in the same sleeping space as a 3 year old, unless the arrangement was temporary. Good lord. Maybe it's because I'm 19. But still, really? That's horrible judgement. And none of those kids ever gets like, 5 seconds to themselves in that arrangement. WTF.

The 18 year-old is in that room so she can care for the younger children and Mom can just keep sleeping and/or making more blessings.

This is the way the Bateses do it too, even though they have the daughters separated into two different bedrooms. They don't have one room for teens and one room for kids. They always make sure to have teens in the same room as the youngest ones so that the parents don't have to be bothered with their problems.

ETA an important word that I left out.

[GenerationCedarchip]

Have you all seen the latest LIaS post? She wants to know what we are curious about regarding having a big family in a small house:

inashoe.com/2011/07/big-family-in-a-small-house-what-do-you-want-to-know/

[Brainsample]

It doesn't look as though she's letting any terribly awkward questions through, though I don't know that I would, either.