Most college faculty (like most college students) in the US are at public institutions, and so most US faculty are technically government workers, too.
There are generally somewhat different work rules and such, but that’s the case in the UK, too.
Yippee! S hasn’t been home since August 16th and he’s coming home tomorrow night! I had him booked on a cheap Southwest flight for Saturday evening but I think he was realizing that all his friends will be heading out of town sooner than that. So, we talked a little while ago and I canceled the flight and booked him a megabus ticket! I’m glad I already did the major overhaul on his room and the donation truck is picking stuff up tomorrow morning.
@elena13 woo hoo! Hope he has a great visit home. 
I haven’t touched DS’s room. I’ve been hands off to the extent that two of his posters fell off the wall and I’ve let them just lay there. I did clean up the hairball one of the cats left on his carpet though.
DD injured her knee Wed night…doc suspects a dislocated knee cap, maybe torn ligaments… she is in pain and on crutches. The school health center has been so helpful…got her in to see an orthopod yesterday (same day), who is also the school’s athletic team doctor. D is a student-athlete but not in season.
She’s waiting to get an MRI scheduled, but things are more complicated with her coming home Tuesday night…do the MRI there or here? etc.
I’m sad I’m not there with her…it’s possible I might still go, but will wait to see what happens today. I’m not even sure she can navigate traveling (one stop and plane change) on her own. ?
So sorry to hear this @Mwfan1921 ! Sending healing vibes your D’s way. And “get home soon” vibes as well. Do what ya gotta do!
S19 will be returning to his disaster of a room exactly as he left it. And then he will get to (finally) deep clean it so that his cousin can sleep in there when family arrives for their holiday visit. He’s home for a week. I feel no guilt. 
@Mwfan1921 ugh! Sent you a PM.
@InfiniteWaves and all of you who have cleaned/not cleaned the kids’ rooms - I felt compelled to do a deep clean of S’s room when he first left. I took down old posters that I know he never even really liked and was just too lazy to take down. Bought him new posters that I think reflect more of who he is now. Cleaned under his bed and took down an old, disgusting window treatment. I never got to organizing his closet but it’s pretty empty anyway. I was just so glad to deep clean that room. It was so dusty under the bed and behind the dresser etc. And he had been shoving things he wanted to save under his bed so I was able to get all of that out, organize it, and get it in boxes that are now in our basement. Something tells me they will be there for the rest of his life and he won’t even miss all of that stuff!
Oh @Mwfan1921 so sorry to hear. Best wishes for speedy healing.
We did a rearranging of D19’s room when she left. Left her posters on the wall, but we had carpet cleaners in so needed to move furniture anyway. I hadn’t liked where she’d put the bed, it felt wrong to me, so I moved it. She seemed to like it when she came back for the fall break, or at least she didn’t complain. Going to be interesting to see what the room looks like after winter break, haha.
@Mwfan1921 Oh no - so sorry to hear about your D - hope she has an easy trip home.
I am on a break from cleaning D’s room right now. Before her visit over fall break I had done a pretty big cleaning of her room and bathroom plus upgraded her to a new queen size bed so she had all new bedding as well. (her room has a bathroom and I had always wanted a bigger bed in case we had guests come stay in there) Well, I moved her old bed into D21’s room but must not have put it back together very well because now it is all wobble. In the meantime D21 has taken over D19’s room so it is a giant mess again! I have the robot vacuum thing going in there right now, her bedding is int he wash and I will do her bathroom later. Then at some point I need to get in to D21’s room and drag the mattress off so I can see what I need to do to fix her bed. 
The good news is that I am in a rush to do all of this today because D comes home tonight! So excited to have her here for a week. She is super excited to see her BFF2 (BFF1 goes to college with her) who she hasn’t seen since school started - we are excited to see her too! She flies in tomorrow then BFF1 comes home Tuesday (D technically does not have Monday & Tuesday off but some classes were cancelled and some she can skip) so it will be the best when all 3 are back together hanging out in my family room with us again. 
My D19 will be returning (in December—not home for Thanksgiving) to a room that’s the same except it’ll have an extra person. Our D17 is home right now dealing with some chronic illness issues while she’s on a leave of absence from college, and so she took over D19’s room because D25 had taken over D17’s room already while D17 was gone (and D23 simply stayed in her previously shared room).
It’s like slow-motion game of musical chairs, it is.
@Mwfan1921 so sorry to hear about your daughter’s injury. I hope she is able to get home without too much trouble.
S19 is still having trouble with his roommate. He and his suitemates have had multiple meetings with the RA and RD. It has gotten to the point that, after letting him handle this on his own, we have decided we need to get involved (he sleeps with his bedroom door unlocked so his suitemates can access the room b/c he is not completely convinced his roommate might not harm him at some point). He has had to find elsewhere to sleep, on more than one occasion, even at the instruction of his RA, including one time after returning on a red-eye flight from one of his games. We could easily get his coach involved, but S19 does not want to move out, nor does that solve anything for his suitemates. I’m just thankful he has less than 3 weeks in that room until he is home for Christmas break.
I cleaned S19’s room not long after he left for school. He shares a room with S21 and the room was in desperate need of a deep clean. There was so much crap under his bed (piles of papers, notebooks, etc from h.s., garbage, sports-related stuff, etc). I organized what I knew he would want to keep, put it all in a big plastic bin and threw everything else out. Aside from being spotless clean, he probably wouldn’t notice I did anything b/c it was all from under his bed! I need to clean again b/c S21 has taken over that side of room, using S19’s bed as a dresser with piles of clothes, rather than putting them away.
I did a similar cleanup of D17’s room when she left b/c we use it as a guest room. I actually wanted to swap her with D23 this fall as D17 has better storage but she had a fit! And this was after she told me she might stay at school next summer…I was like um, you won’t even be here for more than a couple of weeks at a time. Nonetheless, I didn’t fight her. Instead, I told D23 we could redo her room-I’m actually painting it this weekend. D17 is studying abroad so won’t be home for Thanksgiving so D23 can sleep in her room. Need to get it all done before D17 gets home in 3 weeks.
@dfbdfb I hope your D17 is able to get back to school soon. Sorry to hear she has chronic health issues.
My DD won’t be coming home for TG, she only gets Thanksgiving and Friday off. I am so thankful for her roommates though. This one roomie’s fam is driving in from California (only a 6 hr drive) and D is going to “some hotel” for TG dinner w/ them, and then to the rivalry football game with them on Saturday. I have to think of a gift for the family. Does anybody have any ideas? Something that is easy to obtain (gift card,?)
But she will be home two weeks after TG, so I have that to look forward to. I guess I will be cleaning her bedroom too. When we left for Arizona in August, it was kind of a crazy busy time. I should probably wash her sheets, lol.
@dfbdfb what, no D21 to complete the progression?!
More seriously, best wishes for your D17 too.
@SJ2727, ???
(In actual seriousness, that was the year we moved across the continent. A D21 would have been an…interesting experience alongside that.?)
ETA: And D17 is improving, so yeah, things being back to normal-er is on the horizon.
Sorry to hear of the health woes, @Mwfan1921 and @dfbdfb. Best wishes for full and speedy recoveries.
D19 is coming home to Boston on Tuesday evening by bus from New York, with two friends from school who’ll be staying with us through Thanksgiving and the weekend. She’s planning to get an off-campus apartment with them next school year, along with her current roommate (the one with whom she shares her current room in a three-room, six-person dorm suite). Definitely won’t cost more than the dorm, and might be less.
D19’s room never had much of a chance to get messy, as we had just moved in weeks before she left for school. It’s stayed clean and neat since; I think our weekly cleaning crew keeps up with whatever light dusting it needs. Her two friends will be sharing an air mattress on her floor. My mother will be coming Wednesday night and staying into Thanksgiving, so S22 will give her his room and sleep on another air mattress in our room, or on the pullout sofa in the rec room downstairs. We’ll also be hosting my in-laws, and my wife’s sister’s blended family (sister’s two teenage daughters, new husband’s teenage daughter, their baby daughter together – and they now have another one on the way). Those are just for day trips, so no sleeping accommodations. Should be a nice holiday.
So sorry about the knee injury @Mwfan1921 . I hope she recovers quickly and can enjoy the holidays. Save travels to all the kiddos and families heading to be together this week.
When DD’19 comes home she now sleeps in D’17’s room. I think it started when DD’17 was home on a weekend and DD’19 is now not used to sleeping in a room alone, so she stayed with DD’17. Now she just always sleeps in there.
She came home yesterday for the week, but left this morning with her BF to spend the weekend with her sister. Tomorrow afternoon the girls and the BFs are coming back to a nearby town to go to a hotel pool & hot tub, then DH and I will probably join them for Frozen 2 and supper.
This week roommate is going to talk with her family about next year’s housing. She and DD have a tentative group of 4 planned out for an apartment but it’s possible her parents want her to live with her brother. DD really wants this group so hopefully it works out.
I wouldn’t dare touch anything in S19’s room, although I will try and have a talk with him when he gets back at year-end and see whether he can be persuaded to let anything go. He tells me he’s so well settled-in at college that he can’t even remember what home looks like, but I am sure he would notice in a nanosecond if anything’s been “tampered with.” He’s done really great moving halfway around the world and acclimating to life in a small Midwest town, but I can tell he’s starting to look forward to coming home for the holidays. He has a whole week off for Thanksgiving, but that’s still too short for a big international trip, so he’s spending the week visiting Philadelphia with a couple middle school and high school friends who are in the same boat - they are having quite the adventure and trying to figure out how to roast a turkey.
My D basically cleared her room out before she went to college. She knew we would be moving next summer and didn’t want to deal with it as soon as school was over. All her stuff either went to school, the goodwill, or was boxed and put in the basement for easier moving. She’s got furniture and curtains and bedding, and that’s it.
I’ve been deep cleaning my college kids’ rooms too. I fostered some baby kittens and put them in there, and spending time in there (on the floor) made me realize they need a deep clean!
My D (college junior) also really cleared out her room when she went to college, and I’ve realized over time that now it just looks sad. DH has been reluctant to call it/do anything with it, but she truly has moved out of it and I need to make it look like something other than a bare room with a bed and a futon!
Having our second kid away to college (one left, HS freshman) is really putting a new light on the holidays. We are all really looking forward to just having everyone at home, something that of course we took for granted for the past 20 years! It’s good though…it’s making the holidays seem less of a overwhelming, to-do list time and something to look more forward to now.