If you google “Kids Shared Bedroom” or search on Pinterest, you can find some beautiful set ups to gain ideas from. I find them inspiring! But sometimes you have to make do with what you have to work with. And that’s where my kids’ bedroom comes in! We are practiced at “making do” with what we have. And the result has been that we’ve ultimately turned such spaces into cozy, lovely, serviceable spaces.
In our last home, our two children (at the time) shared half of the utility/storage room as their bedroom. Was it fancy? No. Did they care? Not a bit! Was the washing machine a great white noise machine? Absolutely!
I’ve put together this series of posts about our small home for our family of five. I hope it is an encouragement to you that small spaces can be functional and a joy to live in! I also hope that it helps you shed any guilt if you have a situation where your kids need to share a bedroom. Or if your home doesn’t match up to the “norm” for your number of family members. If your home is a loving, safe space for your kids, and it is curated and cultivated to be a place where you can thrive, I am 100% confident that the size truly doesn’t matter!
And your kids don’t need a picture-perfect bedroom, or unique and customized wall paint, or fancy bedding. They need loving relationships with their parents and siblings, and freedom and grace to grow and learn along the way. If they’ve got that, they’re going to be JUST FINE! Besides, sharing a bedroom is a really great way to build character and fine-tune relationship and communication skills!
House Statistics/Room Statistics
- 650 square feet (60 square meters) + bonus building of about 100 square feet (10 square meters) = 750 square feet liveable space (70 square meters)
- 2 bedrooms/1 bathroom + detached bonus room
- Open Concept Living/Dining/Kitchen areas
- Time lived here: 2.5 years
- Ages of our kids: 6, 3, and 1
- Shared Kids’ Bedroom Dimensions: 6 ft 11 inches x 12 ft 5 inches (213cm x 380cm)
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Kids Shared Bedroom Exterior Wall
The kids’ bedroom door is an old sliding door that I think is original to the house. Through it, we enter the room next to the external wall. There isn’t a lot of space between the doorway and the wall. So the first section of the external wall isn’t really useable for much. But this is where the bedroom window is, so the wall is half used by the window anyhow.
We have renter-friendly black out blinds on the window, along with black out curtains to help keep the room dark during sleeping times. I highly recommend having window coverings that allow you to make the kids’ room truly dark!
Next to the window is currently a doll high chair that someone gave us. There is also a small, three-drawer dresser. Jemma’s shirts, pants, shorts, undies, socks, and PJ’s are in the bottom drawer. Mara’s shirts, plants, shorts, undies, socks, and PJ’s are in the middle drawer. And the top drawer has our spare sheets, pillowcases, and mattress protectors for the kids. Soon, we’ll move Lazlo’s clothes in the top drawer and find another location for the bedding.
I’m personally a fan of Marie Kondo folding clothes style! So clothing items gets folded and “filed” in each girls’ drawer.
On top of the dresser is Mara’s avocado tree, and we keep a dollhouse here as well. And on the other side of the dresser is the ladder going up to the top bunk.
Kids Bunk Wall
The back wall of the room is also an external wall. And since the bedroom is only about the width of a twin bed with a bunk frame around it long, the back wall is entirely used up with the bunk bed.
The bunk bed is a pretty standard bunk bed. We moved the girls to the bunk bed shortly after we moved into this cottage. Jemma was still pretty little (about 2 years old). So we cut the legs off the bottom of the bunkbed to make her bed as close to the floor as possible. As a result, we don’t have storage under the bunk bed, which is a bummer! But we also haven’t had to worry about a big fall for the bottom bunk sleeper. And less of a climb or a fall for the top bunk sleeper.
Jemma sleeps on the bottom bunk, and Mara sleeps on the top bunk. Mara’s bed has a railing to guard against rolling off in the middle of the night, which is great for a bit of peace of mind. We do have to keep the bunk bed pulled out from the back wall by a few inches, to help with airflow (New Zealand very quickly grows mold!). But other than stuffed animals ending up behind the bunk bed, we haven’t had a problem with anyone falling back there.
Above Mara’s head is a shelf across most of the next wall, which brings us to the closet wall.
Kids Closet Wall
The kids’ shared bedroom closet wall is the wall that is shared between the primary room and this room. Two-thirds of it is a closet on the primary bedroom side, and one-third of it is the closet in the kids’ bedroom.
There is a shelf about my eye level height that spans from close to the exterior back wall all the way to the closet. This is a great spot for Mara to store her treasures. We also have a sound machine and a lamp and a plant on the shelf. Mara has a jewelry tree that both girls share, and several plastic bins for things like her goggles, favorite magna tile creations, and shells. (We got the white storage tubs off a local store’s online option, but these are similar on Amazon.) She also has a little desk organizer where she can keep chapstick, a treasured notebook, and other small items.
There are hooks underneath the shelf that Mara uses to hang her water bottle on at night, as well as favorite pieces of art.
On the floor along this wall we keep Lazlo’s cot mattress, which serves as his floor bed. We just moved him from his portacot to the cot mattress so that we can get him used to the floor bed before the new baby arrives and needs the portacot. The mattress just fits, so that brings us to the section of this wall that is the closet.
Kids Shared Bedroom Closet Organization
The closet is a very useful storage location in the kids’ shared bedroom, mostly because there is no under-the-bed storage. So the bottom side of one half of the closet serves to keep the girls dresses and sweatshirts.
The top of that half of the closet holds puzzles, games, spare comfort items, and extra blankets (which see use during the winter). The top shelf of the closet has warmer duvets and dress up clothes. Below the dresses and sweatshirts we keep our super cool, fold-up kid-sized table with telescoping legs, and the folding stools that go with it for sensory play and arts and crafts. (Ours are from Kmart, but this table on Amazon looks similar, and this stool on Amazon is the same style, but with way more cool color options!) It was really important to me that we have a space where the kids could sit and have a tea party or be creative, but it also needed to fold up and fit in the closet when not in use!
On the other side of the closet, we keep Lazlo’s disposable diapers. (We use cloth diapers during nap times and when we go out, and disposables at night – currently he just wears undies when we’re home). We also have a 4-shelf bookcase sort of thing that just fits under the hanger rail. That is where we keep a basket of swimsuits, a few toys, and some baskets of books.
Above the shelf is where we hang the kids rain gear, along with a play tunnel. And in the back corner of the closet we have a play tent and a spare portacot that folds down smaller than our primary one.
Kids Door Wall
The wall that the door is on doesn’t have a lot of space when the door is slid open. But we fit a small play kitchen here, which is popular here and even more popular when I pull it out into the living room! Inside the cupboards of the kitchen, the play pots and pans and wooden food lives.
One of my favorite features of the kids’ shared bedroom is the Montessori-inspired book shelf trays. We made and hung them with velcro command strips on the back of the sliding door. I designed them as frugally as possible, and Gabe put them together for me. They do fall off (or get pulled off) about once a month. But they work great to store some of our picture books on, and having the picture books up gives the room a little personality.
We used command strips for them so that we can easily remove them if we switch the bedroom plan around and also keep from drilling holes in the bedroom door.
Conclusion of the Kids Shared Bedroom Tour:
That wraps up everything in the kids’ bedroom! It is a small space, but we try to keep it tidy and relatively minimalistic so it can be enjoyed by the kids and function as a sleeping space for all of them.
I’ve shared some tips here on the blog about how we make it work to have all three kids in one bedroom, so if you’re looking for ideas about how to cultivate positive sibling and family relationships with kids together in a room, feel free to check that post out!
If this was helpful for you, or if you got some inspiration from it, I’d love to know in the comments below!
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