This mum’s IKEA family bed hack might just be the end of sleepless nights

Trine Jensen-Burke

Texas family of seven creates a unique IKEA family bed

Forver waking up hanging off the edge of your bed as your kids are in the middle, taking up most of the space?

Exhausted from making endless midnight trips between your room and the kids’ to banish monsters and soothe nightmares?

You’ll want to keep on reading.

Because a Texas mum might have just created a solution that will ban nighttime drama forever.

Taking to Facebook to reveal her creation, professional photographer and mother of six, Elizabeth Boyce constructed a giant family bed to comfortably sleep two adults and five children. Yes, five.

Just take a look:

Boyce shared a Facebook photo of the family bed she built using IKEA’s Kura beds and we have to admit, this is inspired:

Very impressively, the Boyce family’s sleep space has spots for mum and dad, as well as 11-year-old Zach, 9-year-old Izzy, 7-year-old Ben, 3-year-old Owen and 1-year-old Elijah.

Needless to say, Boyce’s post has been shared thousands of times, with parents across the globe finding her family bed situation both impressive and inspiring.

In an interview with The Huffington Post, Boyce shared the circumstances that led her family to build this bed.”

My husband is disabled and over the last year has spent a lot of extended time in the hospital,” Boyce said. “Our kids were worried, stressed and anxious about dad. They weren’t sleeping well and we were all trying to adjust to the big changes.”

And so she decided to make a change.

With help from their kids, the parents spent an afternoon moving the Kura beds and reassembling them in the master bedroom. The children helped with the shopping and hung the curtains, and a couple of them even learned how to use the power drill.

“It was a super fun project, and it made it a family process that allowed them to each have some input on how it went,” Boyce said. “We don’t actually have beds in the other rooms anymore, but instead we have the thinner foam mattresses from Ikea that are used as reading corners or for when friends come to visit or if a kid just wants their own space.”

Boyce says her kids “love” their family bed, and the co-sleeping arrangement has been going very well.

“The kids are happy and better rested, and so are we!” she said, adding, “Who knows how long it will last? They may want to move back out in a month! If that is the case, we will just separate the beds and try something else. No big deal. Whatever helps everyone sleep is what we do.”