A Shared Room

Hi friends!I get a lot of questions about how I make our boy/girl shared room work, especially with the age difference. So, I thought I would share a little bit about that today. These are a few BEFORE pictures......First let me say this room is still in the beginning stages. When I found out I was pregnant with #5 I immediately worked on a game plan for our home. "How in the word were we going to fit all these kids????" We have 3 bedrooms and an office with a closet we use as a 4th bedroom. It has french doors which are tinted for privacy, and even though it is right off the entry way, it works well as a 4th bedroom. When we first moved in I put Wit in this room as a 9 month old, then it was Knox's room, then it became an actual office, and now it houses Mia (10), Sadie (7), and Wit (3).I put the three of them in this room together based on their common sleep schedule, They go to bed at the same time, they don't nap, and they all wake up around the same time each morning, I also knew they would need the freedom to stay up later without needing to worry about tip toeing around a sleeping baby. We have 2 bedrooms upstairs, so the babies are up there. This allows us to have a slumber party downstairs, and sleeping little ones upstairs.My goal in the next year is to move Wit upstairs once he and Knox are on the same sleeping schedule, and baby Helen is on some kind of schedule! :)  Because of this, all of Wit's clothes and toys are in Knox's room. Wit calls the room downstairs with his sisters his "sleeping room," and the room upstairs his "toy room." :)I tried to keep the room pretty neutral. The girl's hung some art that was important to them. Mia has her reading chair, and Sadie her piano, but that's about it.I still need to paint these bunk beds, but they work awesome for storage with the 2 HUGE draws underneath.One holds all the MANY stuffed animals they all three play with, and the other musical instruments.In the closet more shared toys they all use, and I also have all their books in the closet as well.Mia and Sadie share a dresser, and I hang those fancy dresses in the closet. I chose to leave the American Girls in baby Helen's closet since she will inherit them one day, and they girls don't play with them on a regular basis. This gave us lots of freedom in their closet downstairs for toys everyone plays with, making for easy clean up.So this space is kind of in a  in-between phase. I have learned to think outside of the box when it comes to my home, because we need to make 2400 sqft work for our family,I really thought once I put the "big boy bunk beds" up in the boy's room upstairs Wit would be so excited to share a room with his brother, but that is NOT the case! Instead he realized very quickly where all the nighttime action happens.These three are having a blast making this room work, and I love listening to the stories they tell each other as they fall asleep at night.And even though my tween complains every so often about sharing a room, I know she is making memories with her siblings she will remember forever, and I know her brother will wake up one day and realize it's not cool to share a room with your sister :)