Bunk Bed Perspective

I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase, “sometimes all you need is a chance in perspective.”  Today I got that, in the form of bunk beds.

I spend too much of my weekends thinking about how behind I am at work and thinking about how I have stuff I need to be doing, but how I am not actually doing it.  And more than just not doing it, I cook up all sorts of ways to create new projects in order to avoid doing other things I’ve already committed to doing or that really need to be done.  And usually those new projects involve my kids, so it feels like a worthy “distraction” as I should really be spending time with them anyways. So, this weekend my new project was bunk beds for the kids’ room.

Quick backstory — I live in a 5-bedroom house and have 3 kids, but my kids really like each other and/or don’t like to sleep alone, so a while back they requested to all sleep in one room together.  At the time I had this grand plan to build 3 custom bunk beds myself, and eventually some well-meaning friends and family talked me out of it (because who am I kidding, I don’t have the time).  We then setup a temporary 3 “beds” in one room to see how it went for a while. It’s been working well, and they really enjoy it, it also makes things a bit easier on us, and an extra bonus is that it encourages them to minimize their stuff as there’s just less room for each of them.

So, on a Saturday at 2pm I randomly decide now’s the time to make the room sharing more official and we should just go to IKEA and buy some bunk beds.  We went back and forth for a bit on the various options with our existing beds and potential new beds, and in the end we purchased the Vitval bunk bed and Vitval Loft Bed from IKEA and we moved the old beds into an extra room in our house as I think when the kids get older they might want their own rooms again.  At 6pm we had our new beds at home and started the installation process. At 10:30pm we had the first bunk bed set put together and made the kids make do with that for the night. At 2AM we had most of the 2nd Loft bed put together, and another hour in the AM and it was installed inside the room.  In case anyone is curious, I installed both Vitval beds without the gray panels that they show in the pictures.  I really don’t like the look of the gray panels, as I just prefer a cleaner monochromatic look. Also, we have higher mattresses on the beds so there’s not enough room to fall between the mattress and the bars, which I imagine is what the gray panels are meant for.   The kids love their new setup and it actually opened up the room a good bit too, which is nice. On a semi-related side-note, I love our new IKEA bunk beds, but it was a bit of an impulse approach/purchase vs. really researching all of the options out there. I noticed Amazon has a number of really nice and affordable bunk bed options.  The point of this is not to suggest you go and buy bunk beds, it’s more about the perspective it gave us all…. Just sharing my in-hindsight advice in case you’re actually in the market for bunk beds.

The kids have new bunk bed perspective.  The kids are acting like they have an entirely new bedroom and they love it.  Two of them are up high, and they can’t stop talking about how amazing it is. They have setup little places for their stuffed animals, their books, their pillows, and the other little trinkets that they somehow can’t sleep without.  It’s just a new bed, a new place for them to sleep, but to them it’s a whole new perspective on their room and it truly changes everything.

I also have new bunk bed perspective.  After spending 8+ hours working with a miniature allen wrench to put together three beds and following instructions that could take the place of the SATs, I decided I had avoided my growing work list for long enough and I needed to catch up on some work before Monday.  I have a few go-to spots I will work at in the house, but most of the time it’s really hard for me to focus on anything. This is partially because I am easily distracted, and partially because I have three kids who are easily distracting. For some reason I decided it would be fun to go up into one of the top bunks to try and work there.  At first, I just thought it would be a nice place to hide and would take a while for anyone to find me (it took 90 minutes to be discovered). But also, it looked cozy and I thought it might offer me some new perspective. It indeed did! It took me a minute to crawl myself up these stairs designed for seven-year-olds, but once I got up there, I really enjoyed it.  It was a nice and quiet and it was just new. I pumped out a couple of hours of focused work. I was more productive than I would have previously been. These bunk beds have given me some new perspective… just a little bit, but enough to re-focus me.

I pride myself on authenticity, so I want you to know that I’ve actually written this blog post from the bunk bed.  Also, my husband just came in here to talk to me and he is now asleep on a cushion on the kids’ floor. It appears this new perspective helped him take a nap.  One of my kids just came in here and found us both in here and said, “why have you two taken over our room!?” I thought that was pretty funny. I told her we needed some new bunk bed perspective.

What can you do now to help change your perspective?

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