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D.C. Area Babies
LMH1209
member
If your kids share a room...
LMH1209
member
If you have two kids sharing a room, what size is the room? We are house hunting right now, and unless we happen to find a great deal on a giant house, we're likely to end up with a house where DS will end up sharing a room with any possible future sibling so that we can keep a dedicated guest room for out of town family.
Is it realistic to expect two kids to share a 10'x10' room? 10'x12'? I tend to think "of course it will work!", but I've learned before that I'm often wrong about things like how furniture will fit in a room 
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Re: If your kids share a room...
I don't have advice on kids sharing a room but one other option to consider is letting each kid have their own room and putting a double or a queen bed in the older child's room. Then when guests come, you could have the older child sleep in a sleeping bag or on a small mattress in the other kid's room and give the guests the older kid's room with the large bed. We have a 3 bedroom house and when we decide to have #2, that's probably what we're going to do. I guess it also depends on how often you have guests. We only have guests a few times a year so it wouldn't be too much of a disruption. So, just something to consider. DH's sister has two kids and has used that system for the past 10 years.
My sister and I shared a 9X10 room until I went to college.
It was very, very tight, but doable. But, we had bunkbeds.
With the way our room was set up (with the door, windows, and closet door) I don't think 2 twin beds would have ever fit in there. Remember, you have to be able to open the doors, and actually get into the beds!
I think 10X12 would be enough for two twin beds and a small dresser, though. That extra few feet would make a huge difference.
Disclaimer: I didn't share a room until I went to college, so I have no personal experience.
DD and DS have their own rooms, and we have a finished basement with a designated bedroom space for guests - that's an option to keep in mind when househunting. We have guests about once a month, so we were lucky to find a house with a somewhat cozy area (and a full bath) that doesn't feel too "basement-y."
My mom and my MIL visited over the weekend, and MIL got the basement. Mom and DD slept in DD's full-size bed, and it went fine (though DD is a heavy sleeper). We could've had DD sleep in our bed with us and Mom had her room to herself. When DS moves to a "big boy" bed, we can put DD on the floor in his room in a Peapod (or vice versa) or have him sleep in her bed with her while a guest gets his bed. A little bed-shuffling can be done as needed, especially if you don't have guests too often. I wouldn't want a designated guest room that barely got used.
To finally respond to your actual question, we rented a townhouse with a 10x8 bedroom, and I doubt a 10x10 could've accommodated two little kids without using bunkbeds. Another bedroom in the house was 10x12, and it probably could've worked if all we put in were two twin beds, a nightstand, and a narrow or tall dresser. "The experts" say that kids should only use their bedrooms for sleeping (no homework, playtime, etc.) so they always associate it with bedtime. So by that theory, a small room that has enough space for just the necessities would be fine. I'd think it would become too-tight quarters as they hit teenage years, though.
Short answer: try to go for 10 X 12.
Long answer: We have four bedrooms in our house. We have a very small ranch house, built in the 50's, so the rooms are not big. Three bedrooms are on the main floor, the fourth/guest bedroom is in the walk-out basement (along with a bathroom and a TV room, the laundry room and a workshop). We have an insane amount of OOT guests stay with us - seriously it seems like every other weekend someone is staying with us. Mostly it's DH's family coming to actually visit with us, or coming to the DC area for whatever reason and crashing with us.
On the main floor of the house we have the master bedroom, the girls have the larger of the remaining bedrooms and the baby will get the little room to himself. We will have the girls share their bedroom until we think they're bursting at the seams (when DD #1 is 10? 11? 12? I don't know). Then we'll move DD #1 downstairs to that bedroom. When guests come, she'll get the couch (or a sleeping bag or whatever) and be kicked out of her room.
I'm TC-ing today, so off to measure the rooms...
OK, the baby's room is 8.5 by 10. The only way two people could share that would be bunk beds (it was DD #1's room until a few weeks ago - we had a dresser, a twin bed and a night stand). The girls' room is 10 by 11.5. I think it's plenty big, at least for now. Right now we have a twin bed and a crib, but in the few weeks we'll have a second twin bed. The beds are across the room from each other against walls. There's a nightstand in the middle. At the wall at the foot of the beds is a dresser.
ETA: one thing to keep in mind is layout. I'm lucky because DH is a former home improvement contractor, so he quickly bangs out house projects. The room the girls share had a very wide closet opening - it's a closet that's wide but not deep - it had two bi-fold doors. Well, the only way to put a twin bed against the wall that the closet is on, was for DH to build out the wall and enclose part of the closet opening. So he did that, it looks great, as if the opening to the closet was always smaller. The size of the closet remains the same, just the opening is smaller and now has one bi-fold door.
Our girls share a room that is about 10x13. DD#1 is 4 and has a twin bed and DD#2 is 8 months and has a crib, which can convert to a toddler bed. We also have a dresser, two bookcases and a glider in the room. It took a little work to figure out the best configuration for the furniture, but it works. I don't find it cramped for now since DD#2 doesn't have that much stuff...though we are hoping to be in a bigger place once DD#1 is in "real" school and has homework...we'd love for her to have the space to do that.
We have a 3 bedroom condo, but use the third bedroom as an office for a long list of reasons, the first of which is that we have no other place for all the stuff that is in that third room;) But I agree with the PP that an option to consider is having the older kid have a room with a bigger bed and then kick him out of his room whenever you have overnight guests. My parents did that for all of my childhood and I think I turned out okay;)
I love this idea! Something to keep in the back of my mind.
We have a 4 bedroom house but I like the idea of the kids sharing a room. We coslept for the first year with DD and plan to do the same w/#2 so they would be 1 and 2 by the time they would need to share. I may change my mind but my siblings and I always shared rooms (there was four of us and roommates changed over time) and I always loved it. I have lots of memories of talking to my sisters late into the night.
Our biggest bedroom is around 10x12.
TTC #1 Cycle 14 - IUI#1=BFN, IUI#2=BFP | TTC #2 Cycle 8=BFP!!
