52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy & History

52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy & History by Amy Coffin is a series of weekly blogging prompts (one for each week of 2011) that invite genealogists and others to record memories and insights about their own lives for future descendants. You do not have to be a blogger to participate. If you do not have a genealogy blog, write down your memories on your computer, or simply record them on paper and keep them with your files.

• Week 19. Bedroom. Describe your childhood bedroom. What furniture did it contain? Were there curtains, wallpaper or paint? Was it messy or clean? Did you share a room with your siblings?

I shared a room with my brother from as early as I can remember to about age 12 or so.  Different houses (2), and different rooms, but shared.  The earliest I remember was a bedroom on the upper floor of the old farmhouse we rented until just after I got out of kindergarten.  It was an old house, and I remember feeling it sway in stormy weather, but I remember very little else about the bedroom.

When we moved to town, I shared a tiny room with my brother.  It had a low sloping ceiling.  We had bunk beds, and I had the top bunk.  I recall once falling out during the night, and waking up with a BANG as I landed on the floor.  That room was intended (I think) to be used as a dining room, not a bedroom, and we eventually went back to using it for that purpose.  We were able to do that because we built a room in the basement for a bedroom for my brother and I.  I don't know when building code started requiring egress windows for basement bedrooms, but we never had one.  It was a reasonable sized "L"-shaped room that took up about 1/3rd of the basement.  Bunk beds got split down to 2 twin beds.  The walls were paneling over stud walls, no real insulation, and a concrete floor.

As I got older, I started wanting my own room, so eventually we put a wall up at the corner of the "L" and I got my own, albeit rather small, room.  My brother also got his own room.  I think his might have been slightly larger, but I don't remember exact measurements, and I don't remember that being an issue to me at the time.  I never had a door, only a curtain in the doorway.  I had a captain's bed, a chest of drawers and not much else, it was a SMALL room.  I had one outlet, one light fixture.  This would be my room until I moved out.  Eventually I got a TV (an old black & white someone didn't want anymore) and a pizza oven I picked up at a garage sale.

One summer I didn't stay in that room.  I actually "lived" in my  parents' small old camper in our driveway, at about age 14-15.  It had more space, and a sink and fridge.  And a stove!  I don't think I ever used that stove, though.  I had a radio out there.  Unfortunately, that camper got sold, and it wouldn't have worked long-term anyway, as a Minnesota winter is no time to spend in a camper.  I moved back to my basement room after that.

Anyway, that was the series of my bedrooms while I lived with my parents.