THE SIXTH BEDROOM

A family vacation nearly turned into six nights on a pullout couch.

The trip was supposed to be easy. The poster's immediate and extended family had booked a summer getaway through an aunt who knew the owner and got them a great deal on a house. At first, the setup sounded simple enough: six bedrooms, plenty of space, and a list of who would go where.

Then the numbers changed.

When the room assignments were announced, the house turned out to have only five bedrooms, not six. That left the poster and their boyfriend without a real room. The solution offered to them was the pullout couch.

The poster wasn't on board. They said they did not want to sleep on a couch, did not want their boyfriend sleeping there either, and did not want to deal with the privacy problems, changing issues, luggage mess, and constant disruption that come with being stuck in a common area. So they gave their parents two options: either they would not go if they could not have a room to themselves, or they would book their own nearby place and still pay their share for the main house.

Their mother shut that down immediately. According to the poster, she said they would "ruin" the trip if they did not stay under the same roof.

So the poster booked a separate VRBO anyway. In an edit, they later said, "I had booked the VRBO a bit ago," but had not told the family yet. They had even been thinking about waiting until everyone arrived to bring it up.

Then came another twist.

In a second edit, the poster said the trip ended up being "kinda traumatic in one aspect," but otherwise not bad. And the house that had been presented as having five bedrooms? It actually did have a sixth bedroom. The family had simply "forgot about" it.

By then, the poster had already made the other reservation and stuck with it. They later said they had gotten a "very close VRBO," stayed there for the trip, and thought it was worth it.