Should we keep my stepdaughter's room once she starts university?

[Pearly2005]

I’d really appreciate some outside opinions because my husband and I are struggling to agree on this.
My stepdaughter is nearly 19 and starts university in September. She deliberately chose a university in the same town where she already works so that she could keep her job once she moved into halls. Once she moves, she’ll only be about 10 minutes from work. We’ll be around an hour away, and her mum (who she mainly lives with at the moment) is moving to around 30 minutes from the university.
Because of all that, we genuinely don’t know how often she’ll come home. She may come some weekends, she may come less than she imagines now once she’s settled into university, work and a new routine.
We live in a four-bedroom house. The three upstairs rooms are bedrooms, but my stepdaughter’s room is downstairs. It was originally the dining room, and when we moved in we put a door on it and made it into a bedroom for her.
My husband feels we should leave it exactly as it is because he’s worried that changing it will make her feel like she no longer has a home here. He’s finding the transition to having an adult daughter quite emotional and is worried about getting it wrong.
My view is that, once she’s settled at university, it makes sense to turn it into a more flexible room. I don’t mean taking away her place to stay. I was thinking of a good-quality sofa bed with storage underneath for her belongings so she’d always have somewhere comfortable to sleep and somewhere for her things, but the room could also be used day to day rather than sitting empty for long periods.
Part of my thinking is fairness too. We also have an adult son who stays over occasionally, and I don’t think it’s fair for one adult child to have a permanently dedicated bedroom while the other would effectively be sleeping in someone else’s room. A neutral guest room feels fairer to both of them.
Neither of us wants to push her away. She will always be welcome here, and we’d never want her to feel she doesn’t have a home with us. This is really about how families navigate the transition from having a child living at home to having an adult son or daughter who has moved out.
For those who’ve been through this, what did you do? Did you keep the room exactly the same? Did you change it? If you were the child in this situation, what would have helped you still feel like home?
Please be kind. We’re both trying to do what we think is best for her; we just see it differently.

Is there a way to use the largest room with two twin beds and they can both use . I don't know if I've explained that very well

My mum sold her house and downsized when i moved out. I'm estranged from my dad. I've never had a family home I could go back to that felt like home since i was 18 and it made me feel very sad and lonely at times. Particularly when things went wrong in my life and I had no safety net to fall back on.

She will leave home after university so she should keep it until then.

This is not a decision you should be making without her anyway. Certainly don’t change it behind her back when she’s a way - I’d be furious if that happend to me.

My parents turned my room into a study when I went to uni. It was not the house I grew up in, they actually bought it after I spent a year at uni but I dropped out after a year and moved home. Then I went to a different uni. I then really only came home for holidays but it meant I stayed in the guest room, and if my sisters returned home for holidays someone ended up on the sofa.
I may have missed this but do you have three sons ? One at uni and two at home? So all four bedrooms are taken?
I think you need to keep her room as is until she’s left uni and taken on a flat/house share of her own.

This is good advice. Unlike everyone else though I'd suggest waiting until she graduates.

You should do what my Mum did and immidiately fill the room with a succession of foreign student lodgers.
Japanese girls are the best. Becuase they are smaller, more polite and eat less. That way, when she does come back to visit, its like theres a better, less troublesome daughter in her place.
Not that im bitter or anything

I would leave it until she has completed her first year and returned for her second. She how she gets on and how often she does/does not visit. Id also give her the opportunity to chose what happens.

I’m in the wait a few months camp.

Then sit her down and explain that you live that she has her own life now and that she will always have a home with you but that for the time being you’re going make the room a neutral guest room so her step brother can use it too. Tell her if she decides to move back after uni it’ll be done for her again as her own room or remain neutral if she will only be visiting .

Leave as is for 12 months.
Then discuss
She might dropout. She might come back a lot. She might not.
Dont send wrong message

Keep the room. She may not stay at uni or she may need to come home afterwards.

Would you keep the room if it was your own child?

Exactly this! Going to uni isn’t leaving home. It’s staying away for chunks of the year.

I absolutely loved coming back to the comforts of my home bedroom from time to time at uni and during holidays. Made me feel really safe and comforted.

We won’t be keeping them rooms, haven’t done for my own children either. There will always be a bed for them, but there won’t be a dedicated room.

We left our DSs room as his for the first year, possibly a bit longer before moving his brother into it. He then had the boxroom if he came for a weekend.

The reason for this was that he came home quite often during the first year, but after that he was working/involved much more with activities in his new uni town and only came home very occasionally for a weekend. If he'd been intending to come and spend all summer with us we'd have left his room as his, I think.

Won’t both adult children be home for the (very long) holidays? I doubt they’d want to share a dedicated guest room. I’d keep things as they are for now and think about it again next year.

I would be waiting a minimum of one academic year, maybe even two

This 100%

Omg yes ! My thoughts exactly 😂

you're a step mom so automatically unreasonable 🤦🏻‍♀️

If this was your daughter rather than step daughter what would you do?

I think adult offspring should have a real bed and place at home until they sign a lease on non-student housing. Unless they are living somewhere permanently and truly living as a fully launched adult, you need to keep a space.

It is fine to demote them to the smallest bedroom and promote younger siblings to better spaces.

If she needs to ask you to set up the space for her or ask to reserve it, it isn’t really her home anymore.

Leave it be please.

this seems fine to me. I assume the money was very useful to your mum / parents, and you weren’t living there.

Leave as is until end of summer of her first year (early Sept 2027) whatever you do!

It sounds like you've got 3 others boys - is that right? If the two were fighting about sharing a bedroom, and your oldest had a room, did stepdaughter have the other room at that point? Has the sharing arrangements ever changed? The sensible thing to do then, IMO, would have been for the dining room to become a flexible room (sofa bed etc), and in holidays either oldest got his room back, one of the others had option to share again or go onto softbed dining room (so long summer would probs have been dining room, but Xmas and Easter maybe sharing), OR oldest could have had dining room for hols and when you need dining room he could have shared his old room.

I think, if both your son and step daughter are at uni, they're both likely to be home at the same time and for extended periods, not just a night or two, so getting rid of a bedroom for a sofabed wouldn't work at the moment.
When one has graduated and moved out properly (Eg into a rented flat where they don't expect to be coming back to yours for extended holidays and summers), then you can look at this arrangement again.

I’d give it to the end of the year and then have a chat to your SD about it. How often is she there now? She may not be bothered as long as she’s got somewhere to sleep when she does stay.

I think my parents gave me a week after moving out before taking over my room. My bed was left in there but it became a guest bedroom. I could not have cared less -I still had somewhere to sleep when I stayed and that’s all I needed.

So, that would be a total of four rooms used as bedrooms? Do you and DH share a bedroom? If so, that would leave bedrooms available for DS and DSD, with one left over for flexible use. Am I misunderstanding something?

Well her son lost his room so his brothers no longer had to share if you read the thread.

I think it's fair to both your son and your stepdaughter to make it a neutral space that they both can use. Especially as your stepdaughter's primary home is with her mother.