to think that once your dcs have left for university that they have effectively 'left'?

[IveToldYouTwice]

Have name changed as dd is a spy when it comes to mumsnet. I know times are different now but I left home when I was around 17. Never went back but obviously went to visit every now and then but stopped having a room at home.

Dd went to university last year. This year, her second year, she has rented a house for 12 months with her friends so effectively she will be living there. She also has a job in the city where she's at university. I still have other dcs at home. Her university is in a different city to where we live, around 2 hours away.

Her room is not being used for the majority of the year now so I want to redecorate it and use it for guests as we often have people visiting (family/friends) and our house is tiny and this is now the only spare room. This has been met with wails of horror about how I'm kicking her out and how she doesn't have a 'home' any more. She does, of course, but her room will now become the guest room and she's welcome to come and stay whenever she likes.

Neither exh nor dp think I am being harsh as we had exactly the same arrangement with our parents (exh did come back a lot more often but dp left home and started working when he was 18).

So AIBU?

All the boomers commenting about how their parents did this and it was absolutely fine. Yeah you also had affordable housing! We have a chronic housing shortage, job market might be terrible with Brexit, and it’s very likely OP would need to move home after university.

Also your OP describing your daughter as “Wailing” when she’s genuinely upset sounds very uncaring. Put your daughter first.

Also a bit surprised at people who are assuming their kids will come back to stay in their parents’ house once uni has finished to job hunt, that’s not necessary unless it’s a choice they’ve made. You know the end of final year is coming for a long, long time. You can job hunt as the final weeks approach to make sure you have something ready for when you finish final exams (and accommodation usually extends a month or two after those), and if it takes time to get your dream job in your industry get any old job to tide you over in the meantime so you have an income ready to move into your own place (flat, house share, with friends or partner, whatever). No need to go back to parents unless that’s what you choose.

@hethere I am a boomer and lived in terrible bedsits and would have been street homeless if I had not moved home for 6 months. But once I left home, I did not consider it my home. Where I lived was my home.

that's not what it is at all! It's a sad way to see things.
I pretty much left home for good when I went to Uni, because I then went travelling for a couple of years, then I moved country for my 1st job. It was still nice to have a home where I could come back to if I needed. It has always very much been my parents house, but it was still home.

I see it differently. I saw it as I as lucky that I could visit and have somewhere to sleep - even if it was the sofa or my sister's bedroom floor. That my parents had a small house and money was tight and it would have been supremely selfish and entitled of me to expect them to leave a much-needed room untouched for whenever I fancied using it. You may well see it as 'sad', but for me it was a mark of being an adult - that my needs don't trump someone else's and that my relationship with my parents was secure and I felt independent enough that I didn't need a bedroom as a symbol of whether I was welcome or not.

YANBU! Do not let it be said otherwise!!!!

Both my kids are at uni but this is still their main home. One will walk into a job when she leaves (studying veterinary) but may need to live here if she works in London as the starting salary is quite low. My younger DD is doing an artistic degree and is likely to be low paid and self employed for at least a few years and will likely need to live here. It’s their home as long as they need it. I don’t think it will cease to be until they have permanent homes of their own.

Maybe a better way of putting it would be to ask if you can use ‘her’ room while she is away and introduce the change gradually.

I'm not a boomer I'm 29 and once I moved out at 18 that was me left home. I'm always welcome at my mums of course but it's her house. And I would have never moved back there... I considered myself an independent adult. And I managed to negotiate crazy London rents without my parents - I just worked. I think your daughter is being a bit silly.

I think redecorating her room for guests is a really gentle way of doing it, as she can still use it, but I think possibly second year is a little soon.

When you are in halls or your first rental, it often doesn't feel like home. Often students change accommodation from year to year so still need a base.

Life is much harder for students now than in the past. Financially, and everything is more competitive. Finding a job is more competitive, finding accommodation is harder, everything costs more.

Don't do what my father did. At first, I came home at Easter and Christmas, and worked all summer holidays full time in a local factory, doing overtime too, saving up money for the rest of the year. My mother was ok with that but the next year, having seen how much I made over the summer, the following Christmas, my father asked me for digs money.

To say I was put out would have been an under-statement. He was really serious about it, he wanted my money for coming home for the Christmas holidays and was quite belligerent about it. So I made sure never to come home again. I got jobs where I had accommodation included in the future, I rented a flat and kept it for the next 3 years, but I never, ever went home to stay again. I doubt if my father even noticed. I wasn't there when he died and didn't visit him in hospital during his short illness - I was too busy working to pay my way.

Yabu. Wait til you're old and need help at home vs being put in a nice or not so nice nursing home

I would wait until she has finished uni.

YABU if you are treating her as a guest in her own home but YANBU to use her room for other purposes when shes not about. She needs to know though that in essence its her room not the guestroom

Im 43 my mum still refers to my childhood bedroom as Listsandbudgets room and I still sleep there when I there

YANBU

Of course it is her room but as she no longer lives with you, it is perfectly reasonable to redecorate and update it .

I am surprised by how many people still want their childhood bedroom intact!
Home is where your family and others you love are, not what colour your room is.

My parents changed my room when l left at 19, in no way did l feel less at home when l came to visit or stay later.

Yabu - have you seen the cost of housing? Very likely she will need to return home after uni at least for a little while

If I had the space I would leave it as my child’s room until such time as they set up home for themselves. If space is tight it’s a bit different, I suppose.

Your family was sleeping on the couch when she wasn't even in the house?

Tell her you're getting rid of any rubbish. Put everything else into plastic boxes and put them under the bed. Ask her what colour she wants the walls. Refer to it as her room, even if she's not there.

Do other children have to share a room at the moment?

It's ridiculous to make visitors sleep on the sofa when there's a whole room which is empty for 45 weeks of the year. When you say you want to change the bed, is that e.g. from a single to a double so that a couple could stay in there?

YANBU. It will still be "her" room when she is home, it will just have a bit less of her personal tat stuff on view all the time.

The people who say YABU - do you think it's right that visitors have to sleep on the sofa in the living room when there's an empty bedroom upstairs?

a bit surprised at people who are assuming their kids will come back to stay in their parents’ house once uni has finished to job hunt

not expecting, leaving their bedroom as an option if that's what they chose to do.

Sounds a waste of money to rent a place when you could start saving your first salaries - simply giving the option to chose a bedsit or very cheap house share where they only need to sleep 2 or 3 nights a week and go home at the weekend.

I don't agree that kids stop being your responsibility once they reach 18.

I would much rather for mine to stay for a few years then move, than move for a few years and come back later They will always be more than welcome, but the shock of settling back after a few years is not that fun.

I don't think there's anything wrong with what you're doing, just maybe it needs selling more tactfully. It's still "her room" but as it's sitting empty most of the year it makes sense that you adjust the decor slightly so visitors can use it while she isn't. And yes, let her choose with you.

We were quite practical when at uni. The children still at home got to move into the biggest rooms, only fair, they'd waited their turn. At one point when I was at uni "my room" became a corner of the living room as a long term guest needed my room. I was consulted in advance about that one.

Then even when we were still at school, family would shuffle round and sleep on camp beds/sofa to give guests a proper bed. Much easier to have a family member on the sofa bed who can tidy it away and sort breakfast than have everyone tiptoeing around in the morning in case guest wasn't up yet.

The problem is that they rarely consider the places they moved to as their home. They move with people they've been friends with only for a year at most, they tolerate a lot of behaviours because they have to and need to adhere to more rules they are likely to have to at home.

Moreover, they have no guarantee at all that they might need to move again after a year with yet more people they are not that close with. Regardless of the situation, this rarely makes for a place to be 'home'.

Saying that, the need of the household needs to be taken into consideration. If teenagers living in the home are sharing so that the uni girl can have her room, this is wrong for instance. If visitors come quite often, again, fair enough, but if all the other kids have their own room already and visitors are once or twice a year, I think it is unkind.

I'm gald that my DD still has her room here and will do so until she is likely to make home somewhere she chooses and feel at home at.

do you think it's right that visitors have to sleep on the sofa in the living room when there's an empty bedroom upstairs?

to be fair, most families who haven't got much space and guest room would just kick the kids out of their bedroom to accommodate visitors . If you have a decent sofa bed, can't see the issue for guests either.

FFS OP is only talking about redecorating do that she can have guests to stay at some time during the 47 weeks of the year when DD isn't there and for her guests to have a more appropriate room to stay in. She's not saying that the room won't be there for DD if she does need or want to return home after uni.

I think it's important to consider the size of people's houses here. Our house is only 2 bedrooms and whilst there will always be a place for DS here, as soon as he adventures into a flat share/ bedsit his room will be redecorated into something more pleasant. If our house had 4 bedrooms it would be different.

Nobody suggested visitors shouldn’t use it when the dd isn’t actually there, shiny. Why don’t you make your ds’s room more pleasant now, rather than for someone else after he leaves?

YABU, it’s more they are away at college in my view.
They ‘leave’ when they move out into their own place (renting, sharing, buying etc).

What happens if when she leaves university and decides to come back home to her room, only it wont be her room will it as you would of redecorated it to your taste.

What about her things are you going to box them up and store them else where ?

It seems a bit like out of sight out of mind and I can totally understand why she feels like she’s being pushed out, at least wait until she has decided to move out.

Why can’t the guests just use her room when she’s not there I’m sure she would rather that.

I know you've updated and she sounds more onboard, but I'm in the compromise camp. Give her a bit of input on colours, organise storage for things that she can't bear to throw out yet (really useful boxes under the bed?). It would still be her room but useful for guests too.

Ds just graduated and has returned home pending finding a job.