How do people manage sleeping arrangements?

[Clouds3898]

This year we travelled to the other side of the country with a toddler and a baby to spend Christmas with my husband's wider family. There were 20 people at his Nan's on Christmas day so we stayed in a rented house nearby. The logistics didn't really work v well - lots of back and forth, managing baby's naps, nowhere to sit, v cramped etc. It was v stressful and then took 10 hours to get back on Tuesday due to a combo of awful traffic and stopping for baby feeds, toddler toilet trips etc

Next year we've decided to stay at home. Because it's my family's year we will invite my parents to stay so they will sleep in our spare room. To keep the peace we thought we'd invite DH's immediate family - mum, sis and bro in law too but there's no space at ours for them to stay. There's local accommodation - premier Inn (15 mins walk away) and Airbnb flats etc v local within a few minutes walk. But then they have to do the crap staying somewhere else thing we've done this year. Is that just what people do at Christmas? Growing up my family all lived nearby so we just went for the day

I think this sounds like the best solution

20 didn't sleep there. We all went there for the day then went to a mix of hotel rooms and rented apartments etc.
But even in the day it was weird. I spent most of Christmas wandering from room to room holding a baby - there wasn't really anywhere to sit comfortably and nothing to do. I just felt like a spare part really

It also means no drinking because of having to drive

We have family 2-3 hours away on both sides. Each with medical challenges and shift patterns to negotiate. Pre children we drove all Christmas and new year, clocking up 500-800 miles and sleeping in various houses (spare rooms, sofa beds, blow up beds). We returned to work every January absolutely exhausted.

as soon as DC were born we declared 24 & 25th would be in our own home, alone. Bliss.

we see one side of the family the week before and the other side the week after. We give up our bed for GPs. Once we had DHs Gps too and they stayed in a premier inn. My kids and I need sleep to be human the next day, and any more guests than the beds we have meant we all sleep poorly.

in your shoes OP I’d have one family 24-25th then the next 26-27th. Or similar. Maybe even overlap so you have everyone on one day but one family leaves in the evening.

Look up #duvetknowitschristmas on Twitter.

My family mostly live locally but our siblings who don't stopped travelling for Christmas once they had DC. it's just too stressful, DC want to be in their own home, and it's nice to start your own routines.

We stopped once we had our DC, I need to sleep in my own bed and I can't wrestle my little ones to sleep in a strange place after the excitement that is Christmas week. I have 3 kids, 5y down to 3 months old. We see ILs sometime before or after. My parents we can walk to which is handy though so we don't stay over. Everyone else has to wait, be reasonable or lump it tbh. My sister sulks every year because she expects us all to cosleep on a mattress on her living room floor...she's over it by Feb then brings it up again in September I'm standing firm until the kids are older

BTw declaring Christmas day and boxing day are closed doors here is the best decision we made. The kids stay in their PJ's, we eat, sleep, do whatever we want when we want. I actually get annoyed when I'm then scheduled for house visits there after as it's such a pain getting people ready and dealing with the faff of kids 🙈

I'm not that sociable though 😂

my family are v spread out. We usually b&b or hotel when we visit as then everyone gets a bit of space. Problem is that there’s no where near one family member, no taxis or public transport so someone always has to drive…

From a different perspective, the best Christmas I can remember was the Christmas we had around 10 visitors (aunts, uncles and cousins) to stay and another 6 or 7 relatives came over on Christmas Day for lunch in the 1960s in a 4-bedroom house. The arrangements — sleeping on camp beds, sitting round a huge table (made by putting two dining tables together) on makeshift trestles that tipped up if you weren't careful — must have been hell for the adults (only the one bathroom, one inside loo and one outside) but for the 7 children it was an amazing adventure. Still can't believe that my mum catered for everyone from a small kitchen with a dodgy old stove. The adults probably regretted the invitation to stay over but for all the children involved it was one to remember.

We all stay at my parents, big house! (4 bedrooms). Though someone is sleeping in the office, sometimes in the summer house too.

@2tired2bewitty

Result! Grandparents take care of all 5 grandkids and you get to go elsewhere. What a perfect arrangement.

When they get bigger just go for camping roll mats and sleeping bags, makes it easy and fun

@pattihews

I have similar memories, how we cooked for 18 on a standard gas stove (with eye level grill, remember them?) I have no idea, we struggle to fit everything in a range cooker!

Next year I will have had my kitchen done so will host but they all book into the ibis as we really don't have spare rooms

Haven’t read the whole thread - sorry I know how annoying that is….. but…. It’s not your problem to provide sleeping arrangements. I hosted this year and the thought of having to arrange where everyone slept aswell as everything else would be too much.

We just do a pre Xmas Christmas with whichever bit of the family we aren't going to be able to see on actual Christmas - so say the weekend before or a few days before. We do presents and a Christmas dinner and then that leaves actual Christmas for whatever amount of family we can fit in comfortably at ours.

We have a downstairs spare room for parents in law and if needs be can put DD in with her brother so a family can use her room (double bed and floor space for a trundle). We can also fit a single mattress on the floor in the study and at full capacity can make up beds on the long sofas in the lounge.

It tends to just be PIL and SIL and BIL at actual Christmas but in the summer we have all the extended family here camping in the garden and so we make that the big annual get together rather than Christmas.

We stay in the biggest houses / only invite people we have room for. We are lucky to be able to easily fit lots into our house with bedrooms per couple / family (usually the dc all choose to share 1 room in a big sleep pile!).

I’ve become fussier over the years though. I have realised I hate staying anywhere with only 1 loo now so just won’t do it - we’d choose a hotel instead. But as a child my happiest christmases were the ones we were all packed into sitting rooms and on air beds. I love a big noisy full house.

Glad to hear we weren't the only ones to have happy memories of a big, slightly chaotic family Christmas. Frankly, as children we found the quiet, nuclear-family-only ones very dull by comparison: very little different from a standard weekend.

I certainly think the experience of those big Christmases bonded me with cousins and extended family in a way that held us together later in life. It also taught me to be flexible about sleeping arrangements etc and also to understand how to pull together as a team. I might only have been nine when we had that big Christmas, but I peeled potatoes and scrubbed carrots and helped make beds etc and it was all exciting.

I agree - we had big chaotic family Christmas occasions too, using the wallpaper pasting table and me eating Christmas dinner sitting on a piano stool were particular highlights. Veg prep was communal with the gin and tonics flowing for the adults and Christmas music playing. Fantastic fun.

as we got older those of us who had to work Christmas Eve would arrive at various points during the day. My mum’s first words it guests were always ‘G and T?’ One year I had to remind her that it was 11:00am…..

We stay out. Sen kids.
If others want to join us they are welcome. We have one spare bedroom and that's it.
This year we have my folks in the spare, my sister in a local air B&B and everyone else living locally

As a kid my sister and I hated being turfed out of our shared bedroom at Christmas. I have never turfed anyone out out their room in our house. Use premier inns or other hotels. I would much rather stay in a PI when visiting. Overcrowding is horrible

We had 20 odd people in my parents home (4 bed and a box room, 1 bed and box room too full of junk to fit anyone in!)

We all squash in, no one sleeps all that well tbh. 3-4 people in a bedroom, if on the floor then airbeds, old mattresses, or sofa cushions. With sleeping bags. Someone slept under the dining table I think! Every room is used for sleeping, living room and dining room included. You just have to drink enough and stay up late enough that you don't notice it's uncomfortable. The wait for a shower in the morning is a bit nuts.

Growing up we would often have 30+ of us staying over at my grans. We would have older guests and those with young babies in the bedrooms on proper beds. If we needed to, we would have duvets and blankets in the living room with the teens/kids sleeping on the floor. It was so much fun and we would stay up until the early hours playing games. The adults would stay up chatting too! As a now-adult I look back at those times fondly and wish we did more of that type of thing but it's now always very prim and proper when any family stay over with other family. You have the odd occasion of somebody on the sofa but people generally book nearby hotels. X

That sounds chaotic and lots of fun! I didn't have quite such a large family, maybe two or three fanilues at once, we were also on couches and floors, I think back fondly on these memories, they are filled with fun and love

We just don’t see everyone. There isn’t a big get together. My family would be 17 people if all siblings/kids/grandparents got together and no one lives in a big house.

This year we stayed at SILs and it was really nice. Just our two families - we were in one room (two kids, two adults) so not perfect but fine for a few nights.

We then visited other family on different days or had people over to visit us. So we work our way round everyone but over a week or two during the holidays/weekends in late Dec.

We used to have to stay at our in-laws; each family unit had a bedroom so we were crammed in like sardines and had to wait for ages to use bathrooms. Not fun, and forget trying to book a local hotel, we all HAD to be together under the one roof. These days we host either Christmas Day or Boxing Day lunch and if people can get to us they do, if they can't, they can't. I cannot do the squashing in to every nook and cranny anymore. Stay at home and only invite the people who can comfortably fit in your house.

We generally do not have a choice but to host everyone and no we do not have a big house. The kids absolutely love seeing their friends and cousins all Christmas and having their sleepovers. Yes it’s a lot of work, we are a family of five and we had an extra eleven for Christmas, all sleeping here. Boxing Day hosting an additional seven. So eleven extra beds and place settings to find and then eighteen extra seats for a rolling buffet and party.

I don’t know how we’d manage that without giving up our bed. It seems unnecessary to term ir ‘turfing our’ Nobody has the money for a hotel or B and B and there aren’t any anyway. Would people really not let people in their 70s/80s with replaced knees and bad backs etc have the beds?

Ive literally just finished changing and washing all the bed linens from this Christmas, vacuum packing the duvets back into the airing cupboard, taking all the fold up chairs back to the village hall (borrowed), and we still have food left from the Boxing Day buffet.