The Hardest Organizing You’ll Ever Do – Sibling Shared Room Organizing

I shared a room for years. At the time I hated almost the whole experience. I say almost because my sis and I had some killer games we played at night, when we were supposed to be sleeping. Games like “Guess which song I’m humming,” “Name that movie quote.” Sadly we also planned which movie stars we’d grow up to marry. Sadly, because at the time we had major crushes on boys from the movie Grease 2 (NOT even Grease 1).

Besides our killer night games, I hated sharing a room. My sister was a total mess and I’m the type who alphabetizes books and CDs. Our space was small, and there was never any privacy. I loved music at night, she’d cry and cry if the stereo was on. My fave game as a little was to go to my grandma’s house and pretend her guest room was my real true, all-to-my-self abode.

It doesn’t have to be torture though. Had my mom put any thought into our space we maybe would have been ok. My mom put zero thought into our space and that’s probably why at the age of ten I stuck fat tacks in the eyes of my sister’s Billy Idol poster – I was that mad.

The upside is I spent years thinking it over and I have some ideas about space devision that might help your co-rooming littles.

From a previous co-rooming kid – what we HATE: (otherwise known as what you the parent should be thinking about)

• Having matching sheet sets – rooming together does not make us like-minded.
• Sharing a bookshelf, rather than having our own.
• Being blamed for what is clearly not our mess, even though it is in our room.
• Having to turn off the light when we still want to read or turn off the music when it helps us sleep.
• No clear closet division.
• No privacy to get dressed.
• When you’re banned from your room because you bunk with a younger sibling who has an earlier bedtime – this pretty much cuts you off from all your stuff. Why not just go to bed too?

With that in mind here are some tips about what you can do as a parent:

Ask your kids advice about decorating. Siblings usually have some sort of plan about what might make sharing a room better. The type of beds they want, shelving, colors, and more – try to involve both of them.

In addition to the above, don’t ignore what sounds like an insane request. For example, my sis and I had bunk beds. When I was 13 my sis and I realized that a lot of our fighting came from both of us wanting the top or bottom bunk at the same time. We begged for and finally received a whole other bunk bed set. That might sound nuts to you, to put four beds in one room, but it seriously calmed down our fighting. We had a tiny room too – we didn’t care about the extra floor space as much as having our own beds.

Set real ground rules. Sharing becomes highly overrated when you share a room. I shared my whole space, why should I also have to share my stuff. Make rules surrounding each child’s items. Just because they’re items in a shared room does not mean that the kids shouldn’t have to ask each other to use said items.

Bedtimes are tricky. Honestly I suggest having kids close in age room together so that if your household has set bedtimes they can be the same set bedtimes. Being banned from your own room at 8pm is really lame. Another option is to keep some extra toys and books in another place, like a cabinet in the living room. This technique is also useful if you have one child who gets up at the crack of dawn, and another who likes sleeping in.

Allow sharing siblings some time apart, or time together in another room. My mom used to let one or both of us sleep in the living room from time to time. Sometimes we’d both want to and other times one of us would use the bedroom to full capacity while the other watched movies all night. It provided a good break.

Deal with habit issues: If one kids likes to read or listen to music, get them some personal equipment so that they don’t bug the other sibling. You can get inexpensive personal reading lights that attach to a bed, or ear buds for a music lover.

Set privacy boundaries before your kids have to bring it up: Before your kids even mention it, you should set a decent amount of morning privacy time. Either give each a very nice bathroom time slot, or better yet, allow them each a set bedroom privacy time slot. Like, little Bob gets the bedroom from 7-7:30 and Kyle from 7:30-8. I don’t know the perfect age to start allowing some privacy like this, (not a doctor) but I know that personally, I would have liked this from at least the age of 7 or so on. I also know that I hated that I had to even ask – hence the you take care of it before the kids bring it up deal.

In the next post we’ll look at some cool organizing products for kids who share their space.