February 2, 2025 at 11:15 pm

Relatives Move In And Space Is Limited, So This Teen Doesn’t Think It’s Fair To Banish Him To The Basement

by Diana Whelan

Source: Reddit/AITA/Pexels/Pixabay

When extended family moves in, space gets tight—but apparently, the solution is sending the 16-year-old to the dusty, cold basement while everyone else gets a spot upstairs.

Fair?

He doesn’t think so.

Read on for the story.

AITA for refusing to sleep in the basement to accommodate my relatives?

I (16M) have been told by my parents that I need to sleep in the basement to accommodate my younger cousins who are sleeping over for a week.

My relatives have recently moved to where we are and they are still settling in, my family decided to help them by letting them stay over for a week or so.

Our house isn’t that big so I don’t know why my parents even decided that, and FYI I am an only child.

So it happens, they settle in our house but the problem is literally the entire house is cramped at this point.

The classic ‘You’re an only child, so you must love basements’ logic.

Luggage’s and bags are everywhere, my uncle and aunt are sleeping in the living room, my cousin who’s around the same age as me is sleeping in a small 1-person DIY guest bedroom (it’s just a small unused room that barely has any space) and my 2 younger cousins are going to be sleeping in my room.

Now, my room is also pretty small, combined with my desk, bed, closet, and more.

Only 2 people can sleep in it, so my parents ask me to sleep in the basement and my aunt and uncle agreed.

I flat out refused, our basement isn’t the worse but it’s dusty in there and cold.

And even if I did, I had to sleep on an uncomfortable mattress with nothing but a thin blanket and a pillow probably and that would be super uncomfortable.

Host duties apparently come with a basement upgrade—lucky you.

I wouldn’t want my younger cousins to go through that too but it was MY bedroom.

I asked if I could sleep in my parent’s room instead but as I said every room in our house is pretty small, my parents room is also filled with the different stuff they had when they moved.

My parents got kind of annoyed at me and we had an argument.

It ended up with me going over to a friend’s house and sleeping there for the entire week my relatives were there.

What started as a family sleepover turned into a basement standoff.

With no compromise in sight, the teen opted to crash at a friend’s house for the week.

Was he out of line or just drawing the line?

Reddit thinks he’s NTA.

This person has a humorous (slash serious) solution.

Source: Reddit/AITA

This person says this is borderline abuse.

Source: Reddit/AITA

And this person says age plays a big part here…and no, it’s not fair.

Source: Reddit/AITA

Kicked out of his own room for relatives and stuck between a basement and a hard place.

That’s rough.

If you liked that post, check out this story about a guy who was forced to sleep on the couch at his wife’s family’s house, so he went to a hotel instead.