A room of her own

With a larger family, providing everyone with their own bedroom isn’t always easy. In our last house, we only had two bedrooms. this was fine when we first moved in, as the eldest two shared, and number three was a baby and in with me. After a couple of years, we ended up moving the oldest downstairs into what was our playroom and putting the younger two in a shared room. When we moved to this house two yers ago, with four bedrooms, we gave Lola a room of her own, one for Beastie and then Kiki and Baya shared the master bedroom.

For the last few months, Kiki has been asking and asking about having a room of her own. She’s coming up for eleven and is getting to the age where her own space is important to her. I do think it’s nice if possible to give kids their own room – a place they can get away from the hustle and bustle of a large family, somewhere they can decorate to their own tastes and that little bit of independence it gives them. Seeing as Beastie only sleeps with me, and we only really used his room to store his clothes, I decided that it was time to do some moving around and give Kiki a space of her own.

I moved Beastie’s furniture into Baya’s room, though as I said, he currently sleeps with me, the plan is one day, he will move in with her [when he no longer wants middle of the night boobies!], or I could convert my office into a fifth bedroom if needed.

With an empty room, Kiki set about designed how she wanted her space to look. She requested to do paint the room – we compromised and painted the longest wall, as well as the wall above the fireplace. It’s quite a small space, with only a little window, so leaving some white walls has helped keep the room from feeling too closed in and dark. Once we’d painted {I say we, she did most of it, I just did the highest bits she couldn’t reach}, we had the mammoth task of dismantling her cabin bed, moving it across the hall and putting it back up. I was kind of proud of myself that I managed it all on my own {save getting the biggest two to hold the pieces when I was taking the final screws out}.

She kept my old nursing chair to create a reading nook by the window, and we bought a new rug, laundry bin and some art for her walls. We still need to buy a new dresser for her as currently, she has beastie’s shelving unit – she has her mind set on an old dresser complete with a mirror! I also need to find a blind for her window – the curtain there she told me is ‘horrible’ and I think a blind would take up less space as the window is tucked right against a wall. I’ve been looking at blackout blinds from roofwindows.co.uk, they seem like they will be perfect for the space that we have and will keep the room nice and dark for her through the summer months.

She’s so pleased to have a space of her own, and I love seeing how much thought she’s put into how she wants it and where she wants things to go. She likes to have everything just right- so having space without a sister sharing who moves things around and makes a mess is really suiting her!

Do your kids have rooms of their own?