If you do not have a guest room or foldout sofa, how do you accomodate guests?

[lynn]

Do you give up the comfort of your own bedroom? Or, put the kids out of their beds?

[Impish]

Tazzie moves into our room, makes a sleeping bag on the floor beside our bed. He considers it a huge treat to sleep in our room.

 

MIL takes his bed.

[Mynyel]

We are rednecks...either the couch or an air mattress in the living room :D

[sbgrace]

We have an air mattress. If it's our parents (so "oldish") we take the air mattress and they take our bed. Kids sleep on couch cushions on the floors or couches.

[KJsMom]

For that reason both girls have a full sized bed and a trundle. We move the kids to one room and the guests take the other. We also have a queen sized air mattress (the "guest room" in our previous house;)) We hosted a family of 7 in our 3 bedroom home pretty comfortably.

[MomtoCandJ]

in the house we rented in Saginaw we had a lot of guests for Christmas so we had people in the guest room, the fold out couch and on air mattresses in the laundry room/mud room and in dh's weight room (it was a screened in porch that had been closed in)

[AngieW in Texas]

We have two queen-sized air mattresses that we take camping and one raised queen-sized air mattress that my dh used for several months when he was living in a temporary apartment down here while I was still living in the house we were trying to sell 4 hours away.

 

There are plenty of options with the air mattresses.

[Sasharowan]

We used to have a fold out couch, but that bit the dust. Now, we have 3 queen and 3 twin mattresses, so any one willing to rough it can stay.

[ScoutTN]

Either guests get a kid's room or the sofa.

If we have older guests - like my parents before they moved here - or ones who need more privacy or space - they usually just stay at a hotel! We have a very small house!

[junepep]

@ my grandma's we'd use a combo of twin beds (usually stored in the basement) and blow-up mattresses. They worked great -- and actually, in the last few years I preferred the air mattresses since their quality has really improved and you can find them at target for about $20 around Christmas/Thanksgiving.

[2squared]

We give the guests the kids' rooms, and the kids move to the floor in another kids' room.

[happi duck]

We give our room to the guest family. The visiting kids can sleep on the floor in the room with their parents or on the floor in my kids' rooms. DH and I sleep in the living room.

[Jeannie in NJ]

for years and years we had some of dh's single college friends (male) that would stay with us (we live within walking distance of the beach). One of the guys would stay about 3 weeks with us every summer (he paid for everything for our entire family and played non stop board games with our dc and would ride amusement rides with them forever. He would just throw sofa cushions on the floor and sleep there. Alas he and our other friends are now married, some with children and they stay in hotels so we see much less of them when they are here. We also have 7 cats and that discourages many people from staying here lol.

[Tutor]

It depends on the guests. :001_smile: Usually we give up our bed. However, our boys have a single upper, double under bunk bed, so sometimes the boys will share the single upper and the guest will take the double lower or the boys will give up their room and camp on the girls floor so a visiting family can have space to sleep 5 people in their room (3 in the bunk bed and 2 more on a double air mattress on the floor).

 

We have friends coming this summer (family of 4) and no one is giving up space because the family has asked to just pitch tents in the yard. :D

[RoughCollie]

I move the kids to a futon in the basement rec room, or to the couch.

 

This summer, a DD's friend will be visiting us for a few weeks. She and DD will sleep in the basement, and DS2 will move from his bedroom in the basement to DD's room.

 

When a single visitor comes, I move a kid out of his/her room. We have never had a married couple or a family stay with us, so the issue has not come up.

[sassenach]

Ds has bunk beds, so we move dd5 out of her room and into the bunk. We have had several long term house guests, so my kids are used to shuffling. The 2 youngest get along well and don't have a problem sharing.

[Carol in Cal.]

You enter it from a door in the hall, and there are not any other entrances. It is not directly adjacent to the dining room/family room. So we set up a very nice, 8 inch thick King size Air Bed in the living room every evening while our guest is present, made up with normal bedding rather than some sleeping bag/campy arrangement, and they have a lovely room with lots of privacy. The main sofa is pulled out from the wall--on the wall are our piano and a writing desk. So the Air Bed can be partially deflated, folded in thirds, and put behind the sofa during the day. We have an electric pump so it's fast and easy to reinflate it.

[mom4him]

We don't have guests very often. I have a niece that comes once every 2-3 yrs and my sister comes for a few days about once a year.

We move our dd's bed into our ds's room and set up an older twin bed in our dd's room. If we need more room than that we have an air mattress that we set up in there also.(My sisters two grand daughters came with her last yr.)

I don't EVER let anyone from outside of our home sleep in one of our beds as so many people use fabric softners and the stuff permeates what ever bedding/bed you have them sleep in.(Two of us are VERY sensitive to it) Ask me how I know this.:confused:

[Cheryl in NM]

My parents used to kick me out of my bed, but I got to sleep on the sofa sleeper in the living room.

 

We have an Aerobed that fits perfectly into the school room. There's no room on the sides, but it affords our guests some privacy behind a closed door.

[StephanieZ]

We toss our kids out of their beds. So far, they don't mind. (Oldest is 13.) If they get to be teen-ish enough to mind, I'll boot the littlers and let the teen(s) keep theirs if possible. I try to keep it fun for the kids -- they have "sleep overs" in one of the kids' rooms. . . and can stretch the normal bedtime rules just as they do when we have other kids sleepover. We've done this dozens of times over the years, and so far no complaints.

 

The one thing I would NOT do is give up my bedroom. I need my space!

[elise1mds]

We never, ever had houseguests when I was a kid. How weird is that???

 

Now we sometimes have my mom or my grandmother over for a night. We boot DD out of her room and she bunks with me in the master bedroom while DH sleeps with DS in his bed (he has a queen-sized bed). We have decent-sized couches and plenty of floor space if we needed to host more, but it hasn't happened so far.

[coop]

We use our camper. Thirty-one feet, sleeps six comfortably and they have their own bathroom and kitchen. It's a good thing because our house is only 1000 square feet:)

[Jennifer in MI]

We do have a guest room, but occasionally we have more guests than fit in that room. We kick our kids out of their rooms. My boys are all in the master bedroom. That room is HUGE!!! We stick an entire family in there. It has its own bathroom, so that's convenient.

 

We also add an air mattress to my dd's room. Those things can be comfortable if you get the right kind.

 

We host Christmas. Last year we had 18 spend the night here and all were in beds!!!

[Night Elf]

We rarely have a guest. In 14 years of marriage, my MIL only visited us a few times, for only a couple of days at a time. We usually go visit her. We have never had accommodations for extra people so she slept in my youngest dd's bed.

 

If I had guests on a regular basis, I would come up with some sort of plan to accommodate them. We can't even have a sofa bed in our living room for guests because our one common area is the kitchen/dining/living room area. We'd have to all stay in our rooms until the guests were awake and dressed to ensure their privacy. I can't imagine.

 

I don't think never having guests is weird. I never have guests. Everyone I know has their own houses! When we visit my MIL out of state, we stay in a hotel because we don't want to intrude on her small space. I see that as respect and courtesy. :tongue_smilie: I don't recall ever having guests when I was a kid either. Well, that doesn't count the sleepovers when a friend would share my bed or we'd make a pallet of quilts on the floor.

[NanceXToo]

Couch or air mattress usually; sometimes we'd offer a kid's room depending on who it was and let the kids sleep on the floor in our room.

[QueenCat]

Our older son has a queen sized bed so he moves out to the air mattress in the bonus room. Kid/teen guests also get air mattresses and sleeping bags. My parents prefer a hotel room, as do we most of the time when we travel to visit family (if dh is with me). Kids stay with my parents, we go to a hotel.

[profmom]

In our last house, our sofa bed was in the living room, so this was our guest room. I would put a shower curtain rod and curtain in the door frame for privacy for them. It worked!

 

In the new house, the sofa bed is in an open room. So far, our solution has been to give our guests (our parents) our youngest's room with the twin bed and bathroom. We also set up a trundle bed with the mattress from our oldest's loft bed! Then, the girls sleep on an air mattress in our oldest's room, which they enjoy!

 

We've talked about buying a daybed for that room instead, but this has been a similar, less expensive option, which was inspired by a friend's selling her trundle.

 

ETA: We rarely have guests. Dh's parents come once or twice or year, and my parents stayed recently for the first time in several years. That's about it!

Edited May 19, 2010 by profmom

[jld]

With 7 of us in the family, we already fill up all the bed space in our house. Guests really need to stay at a hotel.

 

That said, if someone wanted to visit and couldn't afford a hotel, I would feel really uncomfortable staying in my bed while a guest slept on the floor, or on an air mattress, or something like that, unless the guest insisted, I guess.

 

Come to think of it, my parents (born in the 20s) always gave up their bed for their visiting married children, but my older siblings (born in the 50s) never gave up their beds in their own homes for my parents. Different generation?

[Desert Rat]

We put the boys in one room and use their room with a double blow up mattress on the floor.

[Julie in CA]

Two kids/two beds per room. When we have company, which is often, we push the kids' beds together. Two ex-long twins = CA king size. We keep an extra set of ca king sheets on hand for each room. The kids all sleep on our floor or on the family room floor, and they've never minded. It allows us to have 3 bedrooms that each have a CA king bed, and another bedroom that has a queen bed. We've had as many as 3 extra families staying with us, and all of the married couples are able to have their own room.

[Peela]

Dd has a queen sized bed in her bedroom, so she has to give up her room when we have guests- which isn't very often.

 

ETA- we bought a small motorhome recently, which is parked in the front yard...we havent used it as a guest room yet, but I think either a guest, or a child, would use it next time we had guests.

[Amber in AUS]

Depends who and how many. If it is my Grandmother then she is likely to stay a while (2 weeks or more) so DD moves and shares with one of the other kids and my Grandmother takes her bed. If it is IL's or friends for 1 or 2 nights then they get our bed and we sleep in the kids beds and they sleep in camp beds on the floor. Or our friends bring camp beds and they camp in the family room or kids rooms. We just make do if it is only short term.

[Jan in SC]

If my single MIL visits, then she takes a child's room. If any other family visit, we get a hotel room for them. Most of our friends from out of town have family here, so they have places to stay.