SUBURBAN * POP

Our kiddos have shared a room since forever. Well, as soon as they each moved out of our bed; we are total baby/toddler co-sleepers. We’ve always had the space to put them in separate rooms but I love the benefits of shared rooms, especially in the younger years. They have a built in buddy (so helpful during those scary nights of childhood), they practice sharing and compromise and consideration daily, all their toys are in one spot, and bedtime is so much easier for our family. The only downside is that they occasionally wake each other up during the night. I’m OK with that, but I know not all parents are. On the plus side of that, now that they are getting older, I sometimes find them snuggling up in each other’s bed instead of waking me up = MY FAVORITE THING EVER. I imagine that our oldest will be requesting her own room in the next few years, so when she’s ready that will be happening. (Update: it happened, but not by request, and now this room is this room.) But for now, they show no signs of wanting to split up. I shared a room with my sister (hi Sissy!) for many years and loved every second of it, especially when we’d secretly stay up late daring each other to do increasingly loud things in the hopes that the other’d get in trouble (hi Mom!). I hope my kids will look back with the same memories.

I’m getting ready to do a little tweaking in our kid’s room so I thought I’d show what it looks like now, before it changes. This is the fourth rendition of this shared room over lots of moves and they’ve all looked very similar, except for the wall color (and wood floors – can’t wait til they are in here!). We have a boy and a girl, but even before I knew that, it was important to me to have a gender-neutral room…and what I mean by that is that I am driven crazy when rooms and colors, that by definition are gender neutral, are assigned to a gender. What a lame thing to teach our kids. End that little rant. What was actually important was having 1. a fun and playful and colorful space 2. a clean, organized space in the midst of kid possessions and chaos and 3. a space that flowed with the rest of the house. White walls were the obvious choice to hold all the bright, bold colors found everywhere in here. I’m thankful the basic design has been enduring and practical, taking us from babies to big kids. Simple furniture and brazen colors have served us well.

        

The fan of all fans, that I spray painted gold:

Back in the day when I was having babies (a whopping 8 years ago), there was zero modern leaning affordable children’s furniture. I really wanted the Netto changing table but I’d never spend $1700 on a piece of furniture, let alone one that is literally going to be pissed on. So my husband hacked this one up and then built a matching toy shelf to go with it. As I’d hoped, this furniture has grown with us through the young years and seen so much use. But though this changing table doubles as a rad little toy shelf (and place to color coordinate books), we have officially entered the done with diapering phase of our life and are in need of a dresser to store their growing clothes. I have an extra dresser just hanging out in my closet that will be making it’s way in here, just as soon as I can whittle down the toy hoard.

We found these matching bed frames on Craigslist after a very long search. I love, love, love the idea of vintage matching beds in all their symmetry. I was hoping for a set of vintage Broyhill Brasilia frames, and will gladly upgrade when I come across them for the right price, but it hasn’t happened yet. We almost went with bunk beds, but we have a little dare-devil who is guaranteed to break his arm soaring off a bunk. Plus, I will snuggle up with my kids until they tell me not to, and I really didn’t want to be schlepping up to the top bunk every night. It was a good decision for us, for right now.

This is a weird little nook behind the (unpainted) door and next to the wall of (unpainted) closet doors. There used to be a tall awkward shelf here that prevented the door from opening fully. We removed that and were left with an awkward patch of green shag carpeting underneath! This is where stuffed animals are stashed. Looking at this makes me want to paint those doors tomorrow.

Completed in this room:

• Paint walls and ceiling
• Remove curtains and install blinds
• Remove shelf behind door and shag carpet under that
• Remove light and install fan

To-do still in this room:

• Wood floors
• Baseboards
• Paint closet and frame
• Accent closet with something crazy…?
• Paint door and frame
• Switch out changing table for a dresser and thin out toys

 Thanks for reading readers!