Last summer’s pool pass
Three dirty socks
One wrinkled shirt
Two old vocab tests
One linty superball
OK, the pool pass and one sock are yours, but the rest of this junk under your bed? It’s your roommate’s – you know, the sloppy kid who sleeps in that other bed across the room? Yeah, the one who happens to be your A) brother or B) sister.
For sibling roommates, sharing messes, space, music and walls just goes with the territory (even if it feels as if that territory is only 3 square feet!). Good or bad, you’re in this together. Can you both live happily ever after?
Maria S., 8, and sister Cathy, 12, share a room – and the Glendale Heights girls aren’t thrilled. “My sister takes over, and she snores too much,” Maria says. “We fight all the time.”
Nick Z., 9, of Elmhurst complains that brother Ryan wears his Adidas pants. Another problem? “I stay up a lot later than him and he gets mad when I come in and turn the light on.” And there’s Ryan’s nasty alarm clock! “It buzzes for a long time, and I don’t have to get up when he does.”
Not that Ryan Z., 11, is smiling either! With the closet and dressers on his side, he gets most messes. “Nick just leaves stuff all over,” Ryan says. “He can’t keep things in one place.”
Sharing a room can be touchy, agrees Chet Witek, who runs the Interior Design program at the College of DuPage. But “it’s important that kids have their own spaces and that they are able to express their own individuality.” Here’s help:
CARVE OUT YOUR SPACE
Try a bead curtain as a funky divider. Pick these up at stores or create them yourself by stringing beads or other lightweight objects (like pine cones or fuzzy pom-pon fringe). Even a narrow curtain can identify your own little nook. And get your roommie to help (after all, guess who else gets space on the other side of the curtain?).
LOOK UP
“Think vertically,” Witek says. Each roommate can have racks, shelves, bins, hammocks for stuffed animals, bulletin boards and other holders mounted on their wall. With a parent’s help, add a loft – like a jumbo shelf where you can stretch out. Or get some “grab bars” from a home improvement store, and make your own climbing wall to “hang out” on your side of the room.
DO A DISCO DIVIDER
Brighten up your space with unusual lighting. Again, Witek stresses asking parents for help – but florescent-type lights can be slipped in colored plexi-glass tubes and used to jazz up and identify space. Christmas-type lights can work too.
CREATE CREATIVITY
Ask for a space to create. Do you like cars? Witek once hung an abandoned car hood on a wall where a boy and his buds could scratch graffiti. Can you and your sibs each paint a section of the wall in your own styles?
CLAIM A CUBBY
Consider making “cubbyhole” areas in the room. Get a small rug, pillows and plenty of your fave things to put there. If you and your sib have matching bookshelves or dressers, maybe pull them away from the wall and place them back to back. The space in front of each bookcase would give you each a little spot.
SERVE A COMBO PLATTER
All this separation stuff can get frustrating. Witek says it’s cooler to combine your interests in funny ways. Let’s say you like ballet and your sister raves about outer space. Try thinking “Ballet Dancers in Space” and see what ideas pop up. Or if you like sports and your brother likes animals, use team colors on the walls and add the animals associated with favorite teams. “Use the connections rather than the differences in your interests,” Witek suggests.
Lindsay and Laura H. have their share of troubles as roommates. (Laura, 11, dreams of having her own room where she could listen to B 96 all the time!) But there’s at least one way the Glen Ellyn girls use their connection. Explains Lindsay, 8: “When our brother bugs us, we barricade the door with the bunk bed so he can’t get in!”
