Navigating each other’s sleep schedule is one thing, but the bigger challenge, she said, is when everyone is awake. Ms. Ashcraft, who still has her job with the university’s alumni association,
When she needs her space, Ms. Ashcraft takes her laptop to the porch. And in a throwback to childhood notes telling parents to keep away, she tacks a small handwritten sign on the door that says, “I’m in class,” or, “I’m in a meeting,” so that no one goes outside.
Still, confrontations in their cramped house are inevitable, and often hark back to old-fashioned sibling rivalries: arguments over who gets to use the TV, music playing too loud or a mess in the kitchen. “I feel like sometimes I’m 18 years old again and I have never left,” Ms. Ashcraft said. But, “I just have to remind myself that this will be over one day and I will get to continue building a life for myself outside of my childhood home.”
In the month since she returned to Swarthmore, Pa., dragging a large suitcase, Phoebe Rosenbluth, a senior at the University of California, Los Angeles, has mostly stayed at the home of her boyfriend’s family because her parents, who live nearby, turned her bedroom into an office after she started college. Ms. Rosenbluth has visited her family every day, using the time to paint with her 15-year-old brother and reconnect with her parents.
Still, she misses her Los Angeles apartment and the freedom to eat whatever — and whenever — she likes. During one recent family dinner, Ms. Rosenbluth rejected her mother’s green bean casserole in favor of a meal that reminded her of college life back in California: cheese and crackers: “It’s what I eat in my apartment,” she said.
Sheltering in place has been challenging for the entire family. “It’s like a horrific extended Thanksgiving,” said her mother, Melissa Jurist, with a touch of sarcasm. “Nobody likes the food and I’m just cranky.”
Plus, having two children trapped at home has made it hard to focus on her job as an educator. Then there’s all the extra cooking and cleaning. “I am a cruise director, short-order cook and scullery maid,” she joked.