After some recent checks, I would like to clarify the following guideline found in the manual:
When multiple siblings are living together...generally you'll probably want to select the lowest household number among the siblings living in the household.
As an example of this, if child Bob is household # 3 and his sister Judy is household # 7 and they end up living together one decade, then you should assign the family to household # 3. This likely happens most of the time anyway if you input the households in order, which you should be doing. (By nature of the fact that Bob is household #3, you would already have input Bob in all his decades including the one where he is living with Judy before you even start inputting Judy's household.) On occasion some NF's pop up later on when you do have a household for each sibling and you are forced to choose. Since it's in the manual and we want to be consistent, we will stick with the guideline of going with the lower household number rather than with the sibling who is the head of household as many of us have been doing. Since it's really more of a guideline than a rule (it does say "probably" after all), and because it doesn't really affect the way the data user uses the data, it is not necessary to always go with the lower household number. So don't go back to change it or tell inputters in their checks to go back and make changes. But do try to go with the lower household number when possible.
So this brings up an additional question in my mind. "this happens most of the time anyway if you input the households in order, which you should be doing." This isn't how I input. I tend to search the easiest households first or the ones for which I have the most information. For example, if Judy is the youngest child and is found living with the soldier with a spouse and child in a later decade, I am going to search for her first because I know more about her than the oldest brother Bob, who is single and moves around a lot. Since I tend to input as I search, Judy will have a lower household number than Bob. This holds true often. My children end up out of birth order. Is this something I should change in how I research?
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