Normalising small homes

[lorieats99]

I feel like you just see those big 4-5 bedroom homes on Instagram, and it’s often young-ish people in their 20s or 30s in them. I think that will be a thing of the past soon with rising costs. We rent a small-ish 2 bed new build and it’s easy to begin to feel inadequate about it! When guests come over there isn’t really anywhere for them to sit, as we just have one sofa. Two rooms upstairs, two rooms downstairs, downstairs WC and upstairs bathroom. Lovely spacious garden.

It feels like our home, I’d like a 3 bed in an ideal world but I don’t think that’s happening for us for realistically quite a while. Despite both being on average incomes we will probably be in our 40s before we achieve our forever home status. We are TTC soon, we have a small bedroom for the baby but we would have no room for a playroom or anything like that & I’m wondering how much this matters. I know in some parts of Europe people raise families in flats and apartments, and it’s very normal over there!

Does anyone else have a small home?

@dodobookends if you are my ex, you put them where normal people put their sofa, and sit on an ikea upright chair instead.

Yes, he is very much still single.

Comparison is the thief of joy.

Me and two kids in a three bed flat. I can hoover the whole thing from the one plug, I love it!

We're in the same position here, both still at home for the foreseeable.

I grew up in a huge house with 7 bedrooms 4 bathrooms and four reception rooms, old , grand looking property. DM has lived there alone for over 20 yrs. DF lives alone in a five bed. They have about 3.5 million worth of property between them and are both miserable old gits.
Im currently enjoying my absolutely tiny 2 bed council semi and probably won’t ever move because it’s pretty and has a massive garden and is close to the tube. Even if I won the lottery I’d only want another loo and a conservatory. Big houses are a pain in the arse.

I grew up in a family of 5. In a three bed semi. If was very normal back in the 80s/90s. Most of my friends lived in small semis very similar or even smaller terraced houses.

The new build boom which came seemed to raise peoples expectations on ‘bigger houses’ Although many of them while they have more bedrooms aren’t really that much ‘bigger’.

@Snoken yeah apartments on the continent are listed and priced by square footage as well as condition. So you pay for how much space you are buying rather than number of bedrooms. There are many two bedroom apartments in Spain for eg that have more square feet than three bedroom houses have in the UK. So to a UK person they think "oh two bedroom apartment, must be tiny" but that's because they're visualising two UK sized bedrooms. And no balcony.

I have a 2 bed end terrace, 2 x DC. It is pretty big though, everyone who comes in is surprised. Big rooms, high ceilings. Old.

People get hung up on the 2 bedroom part but it doesn't bother me. I'd rather have 2 large vedrooms than more tiny ones. A couple of years ago a few "large" new houses were built aling the road. 4 beds, but actually none any bigger than mine, lots of tiny rooms.

We have an average sized home. 3 bed semi. We don’t have any “extra” rooms. I grew up with a playroom and a utility and I really struggle even though I know I’m lucky. My parents solution of just shoving it in the appropriate room can’t work for us. And people keep asking us when we’re going to upsize, it’s not feasible.

Why does everything have to be “normalised”? I cant stand that term and how it is currently (over)used.

Your house is your normal, jast as someone elses huge home is their normal.

Stop comparing yourself to what you see on instagram. This is all on you and what you are allowing yourself to believe from social media. Its not down to others to “normalise” your world.

@Enterchat exactly. I’m Swedish and my 2-bedroom flat is just under 1200 sqf which would be considered quite big in the UK.

When the kids move out we’re getting rid of our 5 bed home and moving to a house boat or one of those tiny sheds that George Clarke has on amazing spaces.

the upkeep, cleaning, maintenance of a bigger house is a pain!!

I also grew up in a 3 bed semi as a family of 5 and shared a room until I was 16 so don’t feel bad for being in a 3 bed semi with 2 dses.

Our downstairs is a decent size due to an extension many years ago but upstairs is the classic 2 decent bedrooms and a box room which is home to ds1 currently. It works for us, it’s cheap to heat and I have no desire for a bigger house, never have. We are now mortgage free because we haven’t moved up the ladder and I aim to reduce my hours to part time at work from my mid 50’s and step back from my current high stress role.

Sheesh. If you feel inadequate, imagine how those living in grinding poverty, unable to claim benefits as they're asylum seekers... Perspective is everything.

We are 4 living in a 2 bed as that was all we could afford in a super expensive area. We bought 5 years ago.

We've always lived in small places so it's nothing new for us. My DDs have always shared too.

@Snoken yy - 1200 square feet is well over the size of the average UK home.

A big(ger) home was something we put ourselves under a lot of pressure for. Covid really shine a light on that, especially when I started WFH. We spend so much time at home. We had no parental financial help, children young and around average incomes a few years ago when we were making the step. Ultimately the only way we could manage it was to buy in a cheaper area and use HTB, we took the view we'd do what we needed to do now to get the family home whilst we needed it, and worst case downsize if we struggled down the line with HTB or too big a mortgage. As it happens our careers really took off the last couple of years so it's worked out well (even with cost of living) but ultimately something usually has to give, and for us it was location.

We live in a back to back terrace house and it's very small. To be fair the bedrooms (one on first floor one in attic) are good sizes but the downstairs is tiny and you can only fit one person in the kitchen before the room is totally full.

But it is what it is and it's a home.

I have a 3 bedroom, 3 storey town house. My parents do their best to make me feel inadequate about it and my friends all have bigger houses so I then make myself feel inadequate about it.
But I'm a single parent and I have almost laid the mortgage off. The kids each have a good sized double room, we have a garden and a drive.
My married friends who have the big houses that everyone is meant to want can't afford nice holidays, can't retire until gone 70 and are shitting themselves over interest rates. So I guess it's what you value more. You can't have everything (unless you're a millionaire).

Small homes have been usual here for decades, and lots of Victorian terraces are tiny.

it’s not something I think we should accept though - having no where for friends to sit down is really shit, as is not having enough bedroom space for two kids or anywhere to put a desk.

We are a small country but not that small. Only about 2.5% / 4% including gardens is built on.

People living in flats in Europe is neither here nor there - their homes are still bigger than ours. Flats can be really spacious.

Our tiny home nation is about massive profits for big developers and planning laws that need to be re-written.

Despite it all we are still far richer than most nations and people should have proper affordable housing, with public housing for those who will never be able to buy.

Up until WW2 the average house was three times the mean salary and had been for 600 years. Again this is to do with a crazy, broken, corrupt housing system.

We can build enough homes - we had a huge house building programme in the 19thC, between the wars and after WW2.

It would cause a big fall in house prices in many areas but if you look at other countries with more nimble housing systems this is made up for with a rise in GNP because people buy later and move around more for work, which stimulates the economy, because they know they can buy easily when they need to.

Shelter is a basic need, after food and water that we are all the poorer because it’s so hard to secure.

Its the layout rather than the size that can cause problems. Our upstairs has lovely proportioned bedrooms... even the small one isn't bad. But downstairs can be quite awkward... the staircase is right in the middle and takes up a lot of room!

We lived in a 3 bed apartment in Germany. It never felt small. We had a cellar storage room and our space in the laundry room as well.

@continentallentil 'Up until WW2 the average house was three times the mean salary and had been for 600 years. '

This isn't true.

Immediately before WWI, only 10% of families owned their own home. And very few people had access to a mortgage. Home ownership was simply not possible for most. Prior to 1900, it was even less.

By 1939 it was still less than 40%.

I think that the problem might be is that you are equating what you see on Instagram as reality. It really is not!

Its the layout rather than the size that can cause problems.

Yes I agree with this, we have one of the loathed 4 bed detached new builds, it's 1500sqft so probably not as big as the Victorian terrace I grew up in, but the layout is much better for us; kitchen diner, smaller but more rooms downstairs ( good for office space and separate reception for teens), en-suite (I know not very MN but I like them) multiple toilets etc. Not massive but very practical for us. New builds get a lot slack but they suit us down to the ground, and was more affordable for us.

Would love to know your tips! I’m a single mother with one child in a two up two down and I’d kill for a third bedroom and a downstairs extra room!!