I was what Dopers might call a military brat. So what was “my room” changed a lot depended on where we were living. As it turned out my parents were in the process of yet another move when I went to University. In the 3 moves they made while I was at University, they tended to assign a guest bedroom if available as “AK84’s room” which would be where I would sleep when I visited.
Around this time my widowed Grand mother began living with my parents part time (6 months of the year) so often there would be no spare room anyway if I came and my sister would share my grandmother’s room, which both preferred since they were very close.
Military brats of Twitter what was your experience?
They gave my room to my brother. He had shared a bedroom with my other brother, but moved into the basement to get some privacy. By the Christmas break, he had my old room and I was in the basement.
My parents moved the summer after I graduated from High School. Most of my stuff went into a room in their new house that was “mine”. I stayed there for 2 months after high school, 2 weeks at Christmas break, and 1 night during spring break and then came back for 2 months the following summer. During that second summer I worked on a off shore oil platform on a 1 week on 1 week off schedule.
When I left after that summer, I took all my stuff to move into a condo I had purchased. After that I’d come home for two weeks at Christmas break and I stayed in the guest room (that was my old room). After college I moved in to my parents house again when I took a job 100 miles away that required me to work 2 weeks on 2 weeks off and then I slept in the garage for about a year.
Thanks for all of the replies. What bothered me was the implication in some movies and TV shows that when a kid goes off to college for the fall semester freshman year that it’s some sort of final departure, as opposed to a temporary situation.
There are just as many shows and films where an adult child returns to the family home with a lover, fiancé, or wife and their bedroom has been untouched since high school. I think that’s a lot more unrealistic than a room being repurposed as soon as a child moves out.
My room stayed “my room”, but I was an only child, and my folks had plenty of room in their place anyway. I did return for lengthy summer stays thruout college, but those ended when I went off to med school. My old room only disappeared after they moved, 10 years after I went off to college.
Mom did make me get rid of all my old comic books long before then, however.
It stayed a bedroom for several years. My grandmother lived there for a time, and everything developed a heavy layer of dust. It was from the talcum powder she used liberally.
Many years later they turned it into a dining room, covering one wall with mirrors and converting the sliding-door closet into a set of drawers for silverware and adding mirrored doors.
I think my black light posters came down, but it remained unchanged for at least a few years. Probably used as a guest room, but I think my parents had very few guests in those years. (they were separating and divorcing) I was the youngest, so they were empty nesters after I left and they didn’t need the room. I recall spending a summer at that house after the first year of law school (so 5 years after I “moved out”) I don’t recall how much, if anything, had been changed by then. Shortly after that, my stepfather moved in, and it became his office.
My mother’s parents moved when she was 2 years old and she moved out when she got married, 20 years later. When they moved out of the house, over 40 years after she moved out, her room was still referred to as “daughter’s room” even though she didn’t have anything left in there. When we visited, my parents would sleep in the “boys room” (her two brothers had shared it) and I slept in her room. I think the bed was still the one my mother had used.
I had no at home siblings, and we had a way bigger house than we needed. So my room not only stayed my room during college, it still had my stuff until I moved to Arizona 2 years out of college. Then I moved everything here.
Since no one lives in the house now, technically my room is still there, probably just like I left it.
FWIW I still have dreams set there, 35 years later. My dreamscape is like the Universal Studios backlot - I just keep reusing the same sets over and over.
What happened to my room at first was nothing (though, in connection with @Tabco’s post, and a recent thread around here about parents disposing of their children’s belongings, when I came home for my first fall break, I found that my mother had thrown out some of my high school notebooks I’d been trying to save.) However, after a couple of years, my sister, who’d been hankering for my room for a while since it was bigger, moved into it while I was away, and her old room became my room.
That having been said, I agree with you; I found the idea that going off to college at 18 = “moving out” weird when I first encountered it. I didn’t have particularly indulgent parents, but I considered my parent’s house my real, permanent residence and considered myself to “live with my parents” all through college, and didn’t consider myself to have moved out until I got my first real job after college and rented an apartment.
My first two years I was a commuter, so nothing happened. But my grandfather died and grandma moved in with us. This meant my brother and I shared the larger of the two BRs (aside from the master BR, grandma got the smaller and my kid sister (11 years younger) ended up in my parents’ room. Soon they moved to a 4 BR house but the fourth BR was alone on the third floor/attic. Anyway, my brother and I shared that room. Then a friend and I rented a small apartment near school (not without a lot of pushback from my mother) and my brother was now alone in the room. About when I finished college, bro joined the Air Force and I moved back home and commuted to grad school. After that, things were sort of fluid between having an apartment and living at home but there was no thought of using that third floor room for anything. We may have used the room after I was married and visiting, eventually with children. Or maybe grandma’s room as she died before I finished grad school. When bro left the Air Force, he went off to college at Penn State.
Nothing. We had a reasonable amount of room, and I came home for the summers. The year I went to grad school they prepared to move and my father shipped me my books and my night table.
My father’s Boy Scout records had started to infiltrate my room before I left for college.
The bedrooms of my kids are still available, though my books and some boxes have moved in also.
We shared a bedroom being as there were six kids and Mom in a tiny house built by her father. However, our beds were still there when she sold the house after we all had left home.
I didn’t have my own room until I was in graduate school. And it wasn’t pink.
Mine stayed empty and unredecorated other than replacing the drapes until, well now? My brother moved into it when he came home 20 years ago to stay [he did stuff for my parents like mowing the lawn and resetting the clocks when the electricity tanked and suchlike] All my stuff got moved out and boxed, and stashed in the attic. When I took over the house after he passed on, I emptied the room of all his stuff [well except the furniture] and a roomie moved into it. I actually moved into what had been his room, it had been turned into a guest room.
The house I grew up in had a walk-around attic which was more or less divided into sections for each of us four boys. Our sister had her own room on the first floor. So when I was at college my portion of the attic remained untouched for me to stay at when I came home. Shortly after I graduated my sister moved out and got married, so I inherited her room until I moved out into my own apartment.
When I went away to school, my room remained nominally “my room” except it was immediately filled with excess linens or boxes or chairs or whatever needed a home and place to be forgotten about once you closed the door. More than once, I came home for a weekend and found it easier to sleep on the couch in the basement than spend the time organizing my bedroom into a suitable sleeping spot. During the summer months, I’d have to spend a day finding new homes for shit.
When I actually moved out into my own apartment and was gone for good, my room was turned into a spare bedroom. And, ironically, kept cleaner than it was when it was supposed to be my room.
My room turned into Mom’s office immediately. Still had my bed for the first holidays and summer. But I never ever for one night ever went back after that first summer after freshman year at University.
Indulged only child, 4-bedroom house. I’m 37 and it’s still pretty much the way I left it.
I can understand when there are kids sharing rooms, it doesn’t make sense to keep one empty most of the year. But I too am bothered by the situation described in the OP, where the fledgling adult’s bedroom is immediately converted into a hobby room because wheee! We’re empty-nesters now! At least pretend to miss them until sophomore year, would ya?
