How Much House: Do Your Kids Need Their Own Rooms?

Narrowing down what you want from a house can be a daunting matter of choosing between all the dream features you've seen in years of perusing Pinterest and Tumblr, touring all the fabulous homes your realtor has shown you, and fantasizing about your perfect future life as a homeowner. It can be even harder when you throw in a partner and kids, working in their tastes and needs along with your own. Kids can be an especially loaded monkey wrench in your decision making and priority developing process, because it can be hard to make decisions for other people, and kids come with a lot of preconceived expectations about what they need. You might have strong feelings left over from your own childhood about how your parents raised you. There's a lot of cultural baggage out there telling you what to do. Parenting is intense these days, and planning your family home can be too.

While there is no one right decision, and every family's needs are different, here are some links and articles that might help you feel more informed of the pros and cons of different options, and inspired by the approach other parents have taken.

How We're Turning a Walk-In Closet Into a Nursery, in which a Seattle couple describes the decorating process and how their commitment to an urban lifestyle prompted them to turn a large closet into a small nursery for their son.

Jonas' Walk-In Closet Nursery, featured on Apartment Therapy, has inspired many couples who opt not to upsize their home right away after having a baby.

Have Your Kids Double Up and Create a Playroom, also from Apartment Therapy, has a cute design idea for a kid's room with bunk beds, and the comments are full of helpful perspectives on kids sharing or not sharing bedrooms.

What Are The Pros And Cons of Siblings, Even Twins, Sharing a Room? This helpful article from Baby Center goes over some of the factors you might want to consider when deciding what your own family needs.

The Ups and Downs of Siblings Sharing a Room outlines the benefits and detractors of this plan, whether or not you have a big home or a small one.

Peas In a Pod: Should Kids Share a Room? Education.com goes over not only the pros and cons, but offers some suggestions for how you can cultivate the benefits of a shared room even if circumstances lead you to put the kids in separate bedrooms.

Hopefully after reading through some of these experiences, you will have a better sense of what would work for your family and your lifestyles. Whether you live in a large house or small, urban or rural, there any many ways to arrange your household to work with your values and everyone's personalities.