Do my kids need a wardrobe? Small shared bedroom problems!

[SomeKindOfFloppyWeirdo]

We have 2 kids (8 & 11) and three bedrooms. They share, and we had been planning to move ds1 into the (tiny) spare room. However, Dh will be working from home most days now and using the spare bedroom as his office, so dcs will have to carry on sharing. (Argh.) Their room is pretty small though.

So - the plan is downsizing their current bedroom so they can carry on sharing without being on top of each other. Ditching the wardrobe is one idea, using drawers instead (that could fit under the bed) and using a hanging rail in the alcove for uniform/things that need hanging up (not much apart from uniform!) Has anyone got a similar system, and are you happy with it? Or give me any better ideas as I’m stuck! Happy to buy new furniture if you know of any brilliant space saving ideas.

I think the higher bed idea will work really well a then we can have small chests of drawers under the beds which will save loads of space.

@MyDcAreMarvel I did try to convince him to do this, but he often works late/after the dc have gone to bed so it wouldn’t work long term. He’s really happy to be working from home, but it did rather bugger up our room plans!

If there's a lot of space downstairs it is even more unreasonable of your dh to insist on having a bedroom to work in!

Sorry @Willowtree999 I just realised I wrote exactly what you wrote! it must be bedtime. I think that will work really well.

@purpleme12 I’m exactly like that with my own clothes too! It starts out beautifully organised, then turns into some kind of interconnected clothes soup. I’m trying to train the kids to be better than me in that respect...

Could you get some kind of corner bunk beds- I.e. each bed at 90 degrees to each other. Either at different heights, or both high (giving lots of space under). I really like this design, but obvs is an American site - maybe you can find similar here. It would really maximise your floor space

@Stompythedinosaur the downstairs is spacious in the sense the rooms are larger and airy, but they are full of furniture already. A desk in the living room would block the back door, and the only room in the kitchen is the dining table, meaning he’d need to clear off his monitors (plural...) and kit and dump it somewhere. The kids still love sharing, luckily, it’s just a question of space and storage.

If you gave the kids a room each, could DH have his desk in a corner of the older child's room, desk that doubles as a homework desk?

@Saisong that is gorgeous and would solve a lot of problems!

@Lockdownbear dh works late into the evening so that wouldn’t work unfortunately, or works after they’ve gone to bed as he takes time of to do the school run. He also has quite a lot of kit so there wouldn’t be any desk space left for ds.

*time off

If you have so much downstairs space, why can't DH use some of that instead of taking what sounds like very limited children space upstairs?
Or a garden room maybe?

My two boys don't have wardrobes, just drawers and it works really well