Fresh Spaces for My Girls

We moved into our four-bedroom home nearly three years ago and have had two kids since moving here, making us a family of seven. We started out with a girls’ room, a boys’ room and a guestroom on our second floor. But as we’ve grown as a family and as our kids have grown, we’ve had to reassess our layout.

I love my kids sharing a room. They’ve shared rooms since birth, and I think there is something special about establishing childhood relationships and learning how to meet the needs of others. But sometimes there is a clear line in maturity levels when additional independent space is needed, and we want to be sensitive to that.

Our middle child (Emerson, almost 5) has had sleep issues since she was an infant, and I’ve joked that she had to be moved to the annex (guest room) for a season to help the others sleep better and enable us to meet her needs in the mid-night waking hours. So we briefly reorganized that room to be what she needed. This left my oldest (Berkley, 8) and youngest (Oakland, 2) daughters sharing a room and my sons (5 and 1) sharing a room.

But now we are at a point where we feel our kids would function better to move my 8-year-old to her own room and let the two little girls share a room. To say she is excited is an understatement. In true Ragon form, we met with our oldest to tell her the good news and to explain a couple of caveats that come with it:

1. Your room will still be the space used for guests, so you will have to be prepared to move out as needed, with a joyful heart.
2. You may not always have your own space. Our family is big and our needs are always changing, and at some point we may need things to look differently.
3. Your room faces Main Street, so make sure your curtains are closed when you’re changing (gotta cover all the bases, ya know?)

So I’ve been in full remodel mode: taking measurements, mocking up mood boards and pricing out items on my “to-buy” list. Berkley’s room will be the first to receive updates, so my focus will primarily be there. And we will finalize updates to the little girls’ room as funds become available. Thankfully, I am shopping my home (and my mom’s, WOOP) to meet a lot of our “wants,” so our budget can stay small.

Berkley’s room

So for Berkley’s room, we already have the queen mattress, sheets and comforter (may update later), a chair, shelves for the wall, overhead light, desk and desk chair. These items will cut costs significantly but still leave us needing close to $1k if we purchased every item on our list. I’ll spend some time hitting up thrift stores, antique stores, and discount décor stores to circumvent some of these anticipated costs to keep our total lower. (Note: This post contains affiliate links)

Little girls’ room

For the little girls’ room, we already have full and twin beds and mattresses, nightstand, wall lamps, overhead light, wall mirror, floor cushions and some bedding. Again, this would leave us needing about $1k to complete the entire look, but our budget isn’t that big, so we will also be cutting costs here. The biggest expense will be needing a 9×12 rug because this room is large. The rug and wall art will be top of the priority list in this room (I just LOVE those prints).