AIBU to ask how anyone else copes being overcrowded?

[Lemontree1]

I am in an overcrowded very small 2 bed privately rented flat with 3 children.
The bedrooms are tiny.
To envisage how small the bedrooms are, a double bed can fit but nothing else maybe a bedside table, but no chest of drawers, or any other furniture.
According to the council, My 3 children are expected to share one of these bedrooms and myself in another room.
I can’t make them all share, as there physically isnt enough room to fit 3 beds in one room with all their toys, or any other furniture. (We don’t have vast amounts of stuff but 3 children combined do have a significant amount, and I am constantly decluttering)
So, I sleep downstairs on the sofa.
we are all on top of each other there is no where for me to escape and my mental health has been deteriorating for years now.
I have been told that I am not a priority and that there are bigger families in a one bed flat.
I don’t want anything fancy, just a room and a bed to myself and somewhere I can have time to myself.
I can’t get anywhere else privately as I can’t afford it, I work,but rent prices are high and I just can’t afford more than I already pay. I can’t work full time at least until my youngest boys are in school.
I am so claustrophobic and although I try my best this affects my parenting.
Also, for reference I have twins and a singleton. My children’s ages are 3,3 and 12. All boys, so apparently can all share until they are 16.

Is there anyone else in a similar situation? How do you manage to cope? I just feel like I can’t cope much longer, but have no idea how to get out of this situation.

its strange as my council say 3 needs need 3 bedrooms, its 2 kids per room

My dd had a wrought iron daybed from ikea that lasted years. It was really pretty and with bolster cushions and a throw, looked like a sofa in the day. Only thing to be aware of is that ikea beds aren't standard UK sizes so need mattresses from ikea too.
You could also buy high bookcases or shelving units and put fabric boxes on them to contain some of your clothes/personal things, which would remove them from your son's room and free up his space but they would still be hidden from view.
I had a lot of under bed storage and an ottoman for sheets/towels.
If you can get a free standing storage unit in the bathroom you can put all towels and toiletries in there.
Put good storage everywhere you can. Pinterest has lots of ideas.

I've never lived in a cramped house but have nannied for families who do. My advice is be outdoors as much as possible! Go to the park, go for long walks, hire a bike trailer and go for bike rides on cycle trails, etc. Invest in waterproofs for all of you so you can be outside whatever the weather. If they're exhausted from tearing around outside they'll be sitting quietly on the sofa at home which makes the house seem a lot less cramped than if they were running around noisily!

If you have a garden, camp out in it sometimes in the summer with the little ones, or your eldest can camp with a friend. Eat outdoors as much as you can in summer - no crumbs to worry about! When you do eat indoors, make sure everyone is sitting down at the table not wandering around spreading crumbs and stickiness.

Get a bunk bed - twins can top and tail in bottom bunk and your eldest can sleep at the top. Might only be a solution for the next year or 2 but by then twins will be old enough to share bunkbed so it's still an investment. By the time he's a teen your eldest really needs his own space - can he sleep on a sofa bed in the living room if its not en route to the kitchen?

Have a serious declutter. Kids don't need half the toys they seem to have these days! If they don't have them, they can't be spread around the house as tripping hazards. If you have a garage or shed use it for toy storage and rotate, so they only have 1/3 of their toys at once. That'll keep things more interesting for them and reduce clutter indoors.

These would be idea for the twins bedroom and no need for additional storage solutions

*ideal

Bunk beds for twins would create more floor space. You might find them on gumtree

Look at "tiny homes" on YouTube. Some people have amazing ideas for using every inch of space in eg a campervan

I’m sorry by some of the comments on here I’ve only to put it down to ignorance that they can’t understand that a low income and every increasing rent that you need support from the council . Your not asking for the world just a extra bedroom . It’s a shit situation not enough decent affordable housing . I haven’t got any advice just that as the children get older you may be able to get a better paid job . Obviously that doesn’t help in the short term while your twins are so young . I’m just saying nothing is forever and I really hope things improve for you are your family living arrangements.

Have you checked on a website like turn2us to check your getting all the financial support your entitled to?

Is the boys father providing the right levels of support?

As they are 3 are the twins entitled to the 30 hours of childcare which may help more?

Good luck

I don't know enough about any of this but really feel for you.

Have you contacted Housing Associations? I think they have different rules to Council?

Also where do you live? Is moving cheaper an option?

Will 16yr old go to uni/work at 18? Not that you'd want him out but will that give you more space?

I would

1. Ruthlessly declutter
2. Strict routine of al toys away before bed time
3. Strict early bed time so you get the living room to yourself on an evening

Also things like opening windows on a morning to air the place would help.

In my area someone on Nextdoor is giving away a daybed for £20 with cushions too. It looks lovely but there are more comfy armless chairs which fold out to be beds. As it's an open plan space you still want it looking fresh and modern. Those lidded plastic stacking boxes (I bought mine from TOFS) which come in various sizes are good for clothes and toys and can be sat on if you put a colourful cushion on top and a small fold down table could be attached to a bedroom wall for your oldest boy to work on.

I don’t know why people bother coming on here just to judge the OP and not bother giving advice. Hope it makes you all feel superior, well actually as human beings you’re certainly not.

OP I remember when I was younger my friend had a pull down bed that folded into her wall when she wasn’t using it, it was fab - maybe something like that would work in your living room. Also could you use a shelving unit from IKEA to create a cosy corner with storage room and display shelves as well?

I think there would be a good market for the type of furniture you get in caravans to be used in homes - you know like those that are a table and chairs by day and a bed by night.

You sound like a great mum by the way, to put your kids first like this.

@Seraphinesupport

its strange as my council say 3 needs need 3 bedrooms, its 2 kids per room

Depends on the council, my council say to move you for over crowding you have to be severely overcrowded. That’s 4 to a 1 bed, 5 to a 2 bed and 8 to a 3 bed. I’m guessing the op is somewhere like London where the rules for over crowding are more strict

You need your own bedroom back. That much is clear. So you either have a single and a bunk bed in your room and then a single cabin bed and your wardrobe in your eldest room. Also underbed storage. The alternative is dividing the boys room (bunk bed and a cabin bed) with a curtain down the middle of around the cabin bed to give your eldest some privacy. Unless you have a proper double sofa bed downstairs, you cannot continue to sleep on a normal sofa.

How big actually are the bedrooms?

I don't have a bedroom as I'm over crowded as well. But I have a sofa bed. It's a real pain but works. I used floor to ceiling room dividers. It's made the room so its 5ft by around 10ft . But they only sleep in there's they play and have toys in the living room. Then my older boy is on the other side of the divider.

Could you divide one of the bedrooms into 2 for your twins and you? You could divide with a unit or you can get nice sheer curtains to use as a divider.

I know not ideal as wouldn’t be your own room but you cold chill downstairs in your own space then go up to bed (and hopefully your twins sleep through and won’t get in bed with you!!)

Hope you get something sorted, it sounds stressful but you sound like a great mum :-)

You can get bunk beds but 2 3 year olds not ideal, if they'll share you can get single top and double bottom. Or a custom made bed but that would be pricey.

We own, 8 of us in a 3 bed semi, hopefully will be able to afford to buy bigger in a few years. Boy in single room, 4 girls with 2 bunk beds in double room and baby with us in master.

Another vote for the IKEA daybed. DH and I used the Hemnes one as a double for 4 years. During lockdown we folded it up to sofa size daily and put the duvet and pillows plus some cushions on it. Looked just like a sofa - loads of his colleagues on zoom meetings commented how lucky he was to have such a nice study

You can often buy them second hand on Facebook marketplace for at least half the price of a new one. Maybe get new mattress though - I recommend the firmer variety because they are quite thin.

If you get some drawer dividers (IKEA skub boxes are good) you can keep a lot of / all your clothes in the drawers underneath - they are very big.

One other suggestion - is the kitchen a separate room or also open plan with the living room? If it's separate, would there be space for a tiny table and chair? Just to give you somewhere else to sit when all the kids are running amok in the living room?

If I had two kids like I’d planned they could share

You planned that a toddler could share with a pre-teen? That was never going to work.

If you can’t work more (and plenty of parents of pre-school children do) you’ll just need to work out how to make it work. Turning your lounge into a bedroom, with a sofa bed seems like the only solution.

We are living overcrowded as well so i really understand. The secret is to forget everything you think you know about what a house should have or look like and start from what you need to work for you.

Our trick was using all the space to its maximum and trying to ensure most spaces have more than one use. Our saviour was a row of sturdy shelves - deep enough and far enough from the ceiling to hold Kallax boxes from Ikea.......all the way round.......In every room.

This enable most possessions to be kept high up and freed up floor space. It does mean you will have get the boxes up and down all the time but it meant we had nothing in bedrooms on the floor but beds and just sofa and chairs on the floor in the living room. It also enabled us to half our kitchen units and have a table in our kitchen.

Try watching some tiny house and vanlife videos on You tube as this may give you some ingenious space saving ideas. I have a friend who built a hammock over the stair well - hard to envisage i know - but it gave the older children a private space to read or watch their iPad. One family i follow on YouTube fitted 6 beds into one smallish room whilst giving a private space for each child as well.

We have three adults and three children - one child with SEN, one adult in a wheelchair and one who cannot climb stairs plus dog, two cats. two rabbits, several fish and amphibian tanks and we Home educate, work from home and run a small business in a small 3 bedroomed terraced house. Many of our rooms look very different to a conventional home - but our kids still have sleep overs, we still have all the extended family round for family meals/xmas etc.

But and this is a very big BUT our biggest advantage over you is i own my own home so we could build things in - in a rented home this is going to be very very different and i really feel for you. But start from thinking about what you all need - not what convention says a home should have and think creatively.

In all honesty it is not the council aka the publics responsibility to subsidise a bigger house. What about the children's' dad(s) ? Obviously not your fault you had twins but it sounds like you were low income before they were born. It's tough but people always did manage before

@Lemontree1We've just moved from a very small flat, and you need to use your walls for storage - rails, hooks, shelves with boxes on for clothes and toys etc. It really does need to look like one of those ikea show flats they have in the store. I'd really consider doing away with a wardrobe and doing open shelving and folding. You don't get enough storage for the floor space!

Posters saying a 12 year old should not be sharing with 3 years olds but the 12 year old was always going to share with a 3 year old. Ok the OP didn't know she was going to have twins but the children were always going to have to share.

Of course it's not ideal with such a large age gap but plenty of people have to do the same.

I shared a bedroom with my 2 sisters until I left home at 22. The age gaps were 2 years and 8 years. We lived in a council house and the council said it was fine for 3 children of the same sex to share.

My next door neighbour has a 14 year old and a 2 year old sharing and another neighbour has an 11 year old, a 6 year old and a baby sharing

@mydogisthebest

Posters saying a 12 year old should not be sharing with 3 years olds but the 12 year old was always going to share with a 3 year old. Ok the OP didn't know she was going to have twins but the children were always going to have to share.

Of course it's not ideal with such a large age gap but plenty of people have to do the same.

I shared a bedroom with my 2 sisters until I left home at 22. The age gaps were 2 years and 8 years. We lived in a council house and the council said it was fine for 3 children of the same sex to share.

My next door neighbour has a 14 year old and a 2 year old sharing and another neighbour has an 11 year old, a 6 year old and a baby sharing

So?

@gogohm

In all honesty it is not the council aka the publics responsibility to subsidise a bigger house. What about the children's' dad(s) ? Obviously not your fault you had twins but it sounds like you were low income before they were born. It's tough but people always did manage before

Jesus, do us a favour and read the OPs updates before throwing in your 2p