Admin and User trouble

[laurenliberty]

I recently set up multiple user accounts on my computer to make it a little more private for my files. I set up an Admin 'lauren' account and a 'guest user' non admin account.

So I sign on to the 'guest user' account to check to make sure that my 'lauren' files are private and they are not (both for reading and writing). I sign back on to my account and the 'guest user's files are private from me (the files with the red minus symbols on them). When I open up the system preferences User pane it shows 'lauren' as being the admin and 'guest user' as a regular account. Also when I'm signed on as 'lauren' I cannot empty my trash can because it says I'm not an admin. Is my user account corrupted?

Should I make a new admin account for myself and just transfer all my files to that to see if I can start over again?

[mnkeybsness]

repair permissions through disk utility first...
if that doesn't work, you can manually change the permissions via selecting your home directory and setting the permissions and "all items"

if all else fails, you may want to recreate your admin account

[laurenliberty]

so how would I manually change the permissions? Can you do something step by step explaining this?

Thanks