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When Your Childhood Bedroom Isn't Yours Anymore
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Crackers in Bed
04/06/09

In reply to When Your Childhood Bedroom Isn't Yours Anymore
my family had the exact same house the entire time I was growing up, but then once I left for college they moved 4 times in 5 years. in the process so many things were lost or misplaced, including family photo albums. i think this is the main reason I tend to hold on to things, pack-rat style, WAY too long.
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Liz11685
04/06/09

In reply to When Your Childhood Bedroom Isn't Yours Anymore
Since my parents moved out of my childhood home and neither of my rooms I had growing up were intact anymore after my first year away (small room upstairs from 0-13, big basement room from 13-18), this hits home. My parent's house now doesn't feel like home partially because my things aren't there- my room isn't there. I used to sleep in the office when I came home, and now I'm in the guest bedroom.
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Tart of Darkness
04/06/09

In reply to When Your Childhood Bedroom Isn't Yours Anymore
My daughter's room is partially as she left it and partially not. We store a lot of stuff we don't need right now in there and move it before she comes for visits. My ideal is to replace her bed with a queen size and get a king size for us, but that hasn't happened yet. That would be a change she would welcome, i'm sure.

Also it is the only room that has never been painted in all the years we've lived here and it needs it.
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Jenloveshercurves
04/05/09

In reply to When Your Childhood Bedroom Isn't Yours Anymore
Mom and Dad actually upgraded from my idyllic childhood farm house to some eighties built monstrosity filled with textured walls. My room was being painted by a new family when I was leaving for college. They knocked down the trees in front of the old farm house and covered the lovely river-rock exterior in blue plastic siding and added a huge addition. They also sanitized the whole house of it's 1930's farm house feel by tearing down the antique wall paper and painting everything white. Also by carpeting over the hardwood (I have a deep and abiding hate for carpet). My mom asked me to help decorate my "new room" but it always felt like I was decorating something for her. So, while my more adult tastes are represented in that room, it still isn't and will never be "mine." My mom is deeply saddened that I don't feel any affinity for her new home and I always feel like a guest there. I remind her, you sold the home I grew up in, what were you expecting? I no longer live here, you made that clear to me when you moved the summer after I graduated. You can't make a choice like that and then un-choose it. You need to accept that your "home" is no longer my "home" because I'm an adult now. That doesn't mean that I don't love you, it just means that I don't live here any more.
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vulcanized
04/05/09

In reply to When Your Childhood Bedroom Isn't Yours Anymore
My parents moved and they still preserved my old room. Granted, it's pared down a bit. When they moved, my mom kept asking what I wanted for "my room" and every time I pointed out that it wasn't really my room - that I hadn't lived there and hopefully never would - she brushed it off and kept showing me samples. So it's a room in a totally different house, but it still has my plaques on the walls, my old textbooks on the shelves, my old prom dresses in the closet - even my tack board with the same things I tacked on it years ago. I have spent exactly 1 night in that room (at Christmas). In fact, I'm house sitting for my folks next week and I probably won't stay in that room, but to them, it's still "my room".
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Tart of Darkness
04/06/09

@vulcanized and zombified: My daughter has gradually packed up more and more of her things from her room and stored them so her room is becoming less "her" and more generalized. It has been interesting watching her come to terms with her things because I had to leave my childhood home at 16 with just barely what I could carry in a few boxes.

We haven't sold her childhood home although we plan to eventually. Wherever we move there will be a place for her and if she has them her SO and children. As so many of you have mentioned, though, it won't be "her" room so resolutely as it is now.
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Tchotchke
04/05/09

In reply to When Your Childhood Bedroom Isn't Yours Anymore
My grandparents' house is absolutely fascinating because they have maintained the bedrooms of all four of their kids so that they are exactly the same as they were the day they left for college or moved out. The place is literally a time capsule with Endless Summer posters, 1950s toys, fad books like "The Valley of the Dolls," Beatles trading cards, love beads, old surf boards, etc. all perfectly preserved. I find it so comforting that they chose to preserve those rooms--if a little quirky as well--because I get to experience who my family members were when they were around my age and it provides the illusion that certain things are unchanging.
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Tart of Darkness
04/06/09

@Tchotchke: We have a friend who has brought all of the things she had in her girlhood bedroom to every home she's lived in as an adult and replicated "her" bedroom in that home. It is a beautiful, fascinating room, but a little odd, too.

But if you have the space and want to do it, it is interesting to have all of the memorabilia.
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ImproperDancing
04/05/09

In reply to When Your Childhood Bedroom Isn't Yours Anymore
My old room is pretty much how I left it four years ago...but it's pretty 10th grade. I actually can't wait for my mom to update it.

I've gotten really used to my room here that my room at home feels like sleeping in a guest room.
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mikskeezy
04/05/09

In reply to When Your Childhood Bedroom Isn't Yours Anymore
This reminds me of that commercial from years ago, where the son drives away and the father comes back upstairs into his room, where his mother is standing with a measuring tape and she tells him "we're going to have to knock out that wall if we want to fit the hot tub in here!" or something to that effect.

My parents (I'm an only child and moved out for school 5 years ago, but spent two summers at home and two months there after I graduated) always joked about putting a hottub in my room, but so far it's stayed the same save for the random shelf with my mom's sewing/embroidery/painting stuff on it. The thing that hit me the hardest was when my dad got rid of my car while I was gone. He bought it when I was 16 and got my learner's so that I'd have a fairly significant amount of steel around me while driving, and then when he told me it was gone I felt really sad! They didn't even ask...
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Tart of Darkness
04/06/09

@mikske: YES!!!! This came out about the time my daughter went away to college and totes cracked me up every time I saw it. I didn't feel that way really, but it did make me laugh.
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The HZA.
04/05/09

In reply to When Your Childhood Bedroom Isn't Yours Anymore
I don't think my mom could ever undo my room when I move out. The walls are painted lime green, with a magenta wave design I painted on, and lined in thick black. It almost is like a comic book. My room is overwhelming to some who see it the first time. But then they say, "oh that's so you HZA." Of course I would have a 4 foot by 6 foot Johnny Depp poster. Of course I would have interesting fashion ads cut out of Vogue stuck up. And then all my hats hung up on my walls. There are stacks of books about because I need a new and bigger bookcase. A collection of Buddha statues and random hockey pictures. The room is a bit chaotic, but it is me.
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stealthird
04/05/09

In reply to When Your Childhood Bedroom Isn't Yours Anymore
My parents moved into my old room (because its upstairs and its bigger) and since I was forced to move back home due to unemployment and being broke, I live in theirs. Gee I wish I could find a job so I could move out...
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dj_sex_ed: is unworthy to comment
04/05/09

In reply to When Your Childhood Bedroom Isn't Yours Anymore
Seeing the phenomenon in movies (someone in their 30s visiting their parents only to find their bedroom fully intact) has always baffled me.

My bedroom changed at least four or five time in the years I lived there and my mother continues to make little adjustments while I'm away at school. She comes from a family of interior decorators so there is a lot of turnover in our home decor - something that bothered me a ton when I was younger, though now I suffer from the same compulsion.

But seriously, I don't get it. Even if you don't redecorate constantly, how does this happen to a bedroom? Don't you pack up your belongings when you move out of your parents home? It strikes me as shockingly wasteful to just leave a childhood bedroom preserved when that stuff could be donated or sold. Also, am I the only one who finds it slightly creepy?
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vulcanized
04/05/09

@dj_sex_ed: Some things are always left. When I moved out, I lived in the dorms so all of my furniture and most of the artwork was left behind. While I was gone, I gradually collected the things that are in my apartment now. It isn't wasteful - something needs to be in that room in case my parents need a place to put guests, so it might as well be my old furniture and linens. And there's not much call for my old science fair plaques or photos of my high school friends, so everything just sort of stays the same.
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momentsofabsurdity
04/05/09

In reply to When Your Childhood Bedroom Isn't Yours Anymore
I guess I've never been really attached to rooms - my family moved around a lot (and I switched bedrooms within the same house fairly often) so it really wasn't a big deal to me when my younger sister moved into my room. Can't blame her, I wouldn't have wanted to share.

Besides, most of my stuff went with me to college, and the only stuff left in there was clothes I didn't wear anymore and random knickknacks.

Now when I go home, I sleep in the guest room. Hey, it's a free bed, I'm not complaining.
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hkcd
04/05/09

In reply to When Your Childhood Bedroom Isn't Yours Anymore
I'm the oldest of two girls and in my second year of college. My sister is still in her room because I do come home sometimes and the size difference isn't that much. My furniture and such is still there but whenever I do come home I find more random things being stored in my closet. My mom sometimes sleeps on my bed when she wants to read late.

My parents say they're going to sell the house once my sister is done with college, so probably in about four years. It's the only house I've ever known, we moved in when I was one, 18 years ago. The idea of not living in that house and not living in that neighborhood, makes me really sad.
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NewsBunny
04/05/09

In reply to When Your Childhood Bedroom Isn't Yours Anymore
I do not step into my old bedroom when I visit the parental units. AT ALL. I hated living there so intensely that I have absolutely no desire to revisit any of that. My mother is lucky I enter her house.
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NewsBunny
04/05/09

In reply to When Your Childhood Bedroom Isn't Yours Anymore
Let's see if I can sign on if I attempt a comment.

Thanks for your patience.
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