Fun With Bunk Beds
Tonight, I’m having a sleepover with my son in his bunk beds. I’m sleeping in the lower bunk while he gets to sleep on the top bunk. Like most boys, sleeping on the top bunk is the preferred bunk bed because it’s cool.
He has been asking one of us (either me or my wife) to have a sleepover with him for the past few years. Last week, he had a friend sleepover in his bunk beds, and the week before that my daughter slept over too. My daughter wanted to try out the top bunk, which she seemed to love!
Initially I thought that bunk beds were a military invention, but it turns out that the first know reference to bunk beds has been found all the way back in ancient Egyptians times.
Frugal Bunk Beds
When I was a boy growing up, I wanted to have a clubhouse out in my backyard. I never got the clubhouse that I wanted, but luckily, I had bunk beds, and they served as a cheap substitute. While not exactly the same, they still worked out quite nicely.
I would take a few blankets and let them hang down from the sides of the top bunk bed, which would make the lower bunk completely dark inside. Next, I would get a flashlight and hang it from the upper bunk’s rails, which effectively made a light for the lower bunk, thus enabling me to make the lower bunk a fort/clubhouse.
Mostly, I would just take my dog in my clubhouse, but occasionally I would get my grandmother or a friend to play along too.
I use hang pouches to the upper bunk rails and tape pictures to the wood sides of my cheap clubhouse (bunk beds), so that it really did look like a fort/clubhouse. It was both cheap and fun, not to mention easy to convert back to bunk beds.
At night, I initially I would leave my clubhouse alone, and sleep on the top bunk. Later, I found that it was sometimes more fun sleeping in the clubhouse because it was like a private room within my bedroom.
During the day, I wouldn’t always want the bunk bed to be completely dark, so I would flip up one of the side blankets, to let light shine onto half of the lower bunk.
Another fun activity that I would do was to pretend that my bunks beds was really a boat, and I would pretend that I was a captain, steering it when I was on the top bunk.
As a 9-year-old, I thought my bunk beds were awesome, and I still have fond memories of them today. So I have to admit, I was kind of excited to relive the past memories of sleeping in the bunk beds as a 9-year-old would.
-MR
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As adults we are always trying to recapture past memories that remind us we were happy. I do it through music, certain songs like the Beach Boys remind me of summers when I was a teenager. It makes me smile and relive those times even if for just a moment.
It was a great trip down memory lane, plus my son got a kick out of it.
My daughter has a bunk bed. Well, the bottom is actually a couch that folds out to a futon. Anyway she loves it. I cannot even count how many hours various people have spent in there just chatting. Bunk beds are great!
He seems to enjoy them. So does my daughter, she loves being on the top bunk bed!
Bunk beds are awesome! You can hang blankets from the top bed and make a cool fort.
Yeah, I loved that aspect, it’s in my article above…
Our boys will share a room soon and I am still undecided about the bunk beds. I think about how annoying it must be to try to change the sheets on the top bunk and all that and worry about my lson falling down when he needs to get up and go to the bathroom.
Perhaps they are super fun and I should just let my worries go
Since my son sleepwalks, we didn’t let him sleep in the top bunk until he was 7 years old. And even then we only let him did it on a few occasions!
Now that he’s 10, he sleeps up there even night! It really is very cool!
If you don’t feel comfortable, I wouldn’t even consider though. Peace of mind at night is a great luxury, so why let worrying about bunk beds disrupt that feeling!
If they ever ask for it, consider it at that point in time 😉