Sleeping on Ship

A major thing you need to decide as the creator of the space ship is how and where your crew will sleep. On modern naval vessels the crew lives in a series of berthings divided by department. The bigger departments, such as Engineering and Supply Departments, have their own berthings while some of the smaller departments share space, depending on how much space is on ship and how large the departments are. Berthings are spaces that can be anywhere from eighteen people to a room to one hundred plus people to a berthing. The crew sleep in bunks three high with lockers under the mats used for sleeping, a small standup locker, and a shoebox large enough to fit a few pairs of shoes. Chiefs, or E-7 through E-9, live in a separate berthing divided more by rank than by department and the officers live in two person rooms called staterooms. (Higher ranking officers have their own staterooms while the lower ranking officers share a room.) Also, there are no co-ed berthings or staterooms, each gender is put together, whether it’s as the female officers, whose staterooms are all on the same passageway (hallway) on the same deck, or as the females of the crew or female chiefs, who are in separate berthings, again divided by rank and department but are separate from where the males sleep.
The berthings are cleaned daily by those living there, usually a rotating schedule of weekly cleaners work in the morning to clean the berthings, such as cleaning the bathrooms in the berthings, sweeping and moping the floors, dusting the room, and making sure everyone made their bed and didn’t leave things out that should be put away. The staterooms are cleaned by crewmembers sent by each department to do what is called “cranking”. People who go cranking either go to clean the chief’s berthing, work in the sculleries, and clean the staterooms, all of which areas are under the charge of CSes who make sure the jobs are done correctly.
There are many ways you can set up living quarters on your ship. You could have everyone in small individual rooms on a small ship or large individual rooms on a large ship. Most Star Trek shows had everyone in spacious individual rooms but in the Enterprise series the crew shared rooms while the higher officers got individual rooms. Give it some thought and decide how your crew will sleep because it can often come up in conversation or cause personal problems that can distract a character from work.