Sharing Rooms

When I was little, about 5 or 6, my family and I lived in an apartment. My brother, who is only two years younger than me, and I had to share a room. We slept on bunk bed, constantly fighting over who got to sleep on top/bottom and sometimes we even took masking tape and split the room down the middle literally.

While being of opposite genders, we couldn’t share a room forever, I think it was good that we had to for a while. It taught us about respecting each others things, privacy, and helped us learn how to “live” with others. When we finally did get our own rooms, many times we used that as a reason to not be with each other- I would go to my room and shut my door and everyone else would go to their room and shut the door.

While I think there is definitely a time and place for being by yourself, I think for my kids, there is going to be more “forced” family time. I want to sit down as often as possible and eat dinner at the table. I hesitate to say “every night” because I know reality will hit and everyone will be going their own ways and doing their own extracurricular activities, but at least once a week, meals will be eaten at the table- no cell phones or TVs- just family.

And rooms- there will be sharing of rooms. I know I have no control over how many kids we will have, but I always pictured us having 4- and I don’t see us being able to purchase a 5 bedroom house- so room sharing is for sure in their future, should there be 4 mini-Johnsons running around some day. And, I think when that happens, I would like their rooms to look like this.

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