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?

Agree

The new houses going in the adjacent village/town got exemptions to have smaller than normal bedrooms and living spaces. It's appalling. To top it all off, the exemptions only apply to the privately owned, expensive (aka grossly overpriced) houses; the social housing homes they were required to built as part of the agreement got 'normal' minimum room sizes, so they're bigger.

Using small furniture in show homes was happening in the '80s, it's not a new thing, viewers have to be very savvy.

I've lived in 2 different two bed flats with my DD. Both pretty standard small British flats. It was fine when she was under 6 months but once she started crawling and needing a high chair etc it was not good. not only was the place depressing to be in because of all the clutter but it just wasn't very safe for a baby. so I wouldn't recommend it but you have to do your best with what you have.

I'm now in a small 4 bed house but to be honest it still feels a bit small because there isn't any storage anywhere (nowhere to put ironing board and vacuum for example) and the living room is half children's play area. And there are 6 people living here right now lol. Most British houses just aren't built for modern family life. I think it's already normal to most of us.

People who take out a mortgage on 5.5xjoint salary are nuts-unless they’re guaranteed huge pay rises in the next few years. And they’d still have to pass affordability so this would be extremely rare.

We lived in a small terrace house with a courtyard garden when DC1 was born. We moved before we had DC2, we now have 3DCs and have a big enough house. Most people start off small. I guess it's only the extremely lucky few who have these Insta accounts with millions of followers. If you have a good size garden, how about a play shed instead of a playroom? I used to keep my DS s toys in our little conservatory. You can find a way. Take the DC out to soft play and the park and toddler groups too. It's totally fine and normal xx

I'm buying a 4 bed house with DH. We're in our mid 30s. There are a few reasons we can afford it.

1. DH inherited 30k from his mum when he was 21 and used it as a deposit for a flat.
2. Commuters were buying further and further away from London so his flat that cost £90k brand new was sold for £170k 7 years later. His 3 bed house hasn't increased as dramatically in the 6 years we've been living here.
3. We have two incomes and no children, so no childcare to pay for. Our only expenses are us and our pets.
4. We're moving half an hour away to a less desirable area where you get a lot more for your money. It's going to make my 20 minute commute 45 minutes but I think it will be worth it. I prefer the new area but a lot of older people pull a face because it used to be rough.

I have a 2 bedroom massionette. I find minimising belongings , getting rid of a lot of stuff has made it much better to live in

We live in a small 2 bed flat, it has 1 large double room in the attic and 1 small single bedroom downstairs. Our living room is reasonably large and our kitchen is very small.
Me, DH and DD age 2 live here, it was converted from a 1 bed flat so the other 3 flats in the block are single people in 1 bed flats. So the same number of people live in our flat as the rest of the block combined.
Yes, i’d love a bit more space but i think i’d also resent paying for space we don’t really need.
Living in flats is much more common in towns and cities in the south of Scotland when England was building all its terraced houses, we were building tenement flats, then 4 in a block cottage flats. I’m still getting used to it i come from the highlands where it’s more common to live in houses.
Overall, i love our wee flat, we had a less than ideal housing situation for the first 16months of DDs life, so we’re happy to have a secure home for her to grow up in. I’m looking forward to decorating soon as i’ve never decorated anywhere.
We’ll probability stay here for at least the next 10 years.

Also, I don’t think we’d get much use out of a playroom as DD is always with us either that or we’d always be in the playroom and never get to use the living room.
Growing up I didn’t know anyone with a playroom, we were the only family who had space for one but my parents never felt the need for one.

Ha ha you’ve just got to work around the guitars.

I live in a 2 bedroom housing association flat and always have done. Only have one child. It's fine. I've never been a fan of clutter and "stuff" anyway, I'm not sentimental so I don't keep all of DS's old toys and schoolwork, everything gets chucked. You have to be a bit ruthless if you have little space.

A playroom was pointless for us as my DD just wants to be where we are. When it comes to toys less is more and make sure they look nice enough to look at. Just like humans don’t need alot of space, kids don’t need alot of toys

From someone who has a not so little house and wishes she did, big houses cost a lot to run and a lot of time to clean. The only saving grace is hopefully splitting it in half one day to provide a home for my DD when she’s ready to move out and eventually have that smaller home to care for

I’m one of 5 and growing up we only had a kitchen and a living room downstairs and three bedrooms and one bathroom upstairs, I never ever felt like we didn’t have space. We played outside a lot, we sat on our beds reading/watching tv/listening to music etc, we also sat and watched tv together as a family in the living room and had tea on our laps on trays - we were all fine.

For a baby/toddler you just need a bit of floor space in living room, ideally somewhere to put a small bouncer chair, progressing into a small playpen if you can or another type of chair so you can leave them to go toilet/open front door/make a drink etc knowing that they are safe. They can play with a few toys on living room and their bedroom floor if there is space or even on your bed. Kids don’t need loads of toys.

I think a terrace house with a courtyard garden is an aspirational house, not a starter home. I think your view point is a bit skewed. Yes, it’s not a mega-mansion, but it’s much more than most people’s first, or only, homes.

Haven’t RTFT yet but I live in the Netherlands in a 2-bed flat with my husband and 2 kids (ages 4y9m and 5m). We rent an underground parking space at my husband’s workplace and we also rent a small storage unit for Christmas decorations, baby stuff etc (the high chair will be coming out of there soon though!).
For the moment baby rooms with us but soon he will move in with his brother (cot and toddler bed in the one room will make for a tight squeeze but OK). When he is 2 we will get rid of the cot and toddler bed, and get bunk beds.
Do I wish we had more space? A home office and a balcony would be nice. However, we have to be very economical with the space we do have and that’s not a bad thing.
We could move of course but it would double or even triple our rent even if we moved to a less desirable location…no thanks. We will cope, and are fine with that given the proximity to amenities and to our workplaces, the children’s school/crèche etc. For us convenience is king and if that means going without an extra bedroom then we will.

Yes! I live in a 2 up 2 down that is 12 feet wide! It small but perfectly formed!

We had one of the 4-5 bedroom homes you describe bought at 32, but had to live 200 miles away from family to do it. Then the covid pandemic happened and since then we have moved. Have a 3 bed house, family are up the road. The house looks beautiful but there is more to life than a huge house that needs constant cleaning.

We have brought up 4 children in a house with 2 and a half bedrooms (3rd bedroom a box room). Only 2 at home now and it feels empty. I would note that dd2 has recently bought a 7 bedroom house for her, her dh and one child. They are knocking some together and also a couple will be offices for wfh.

I live in one of those communist era flats in Eastern Europe. There is four of us and we live in a two bedroom flat, around 82 square metres. Most of our friends live in flats like ours, although there are some who live in one bedroom apartments and parents sleep in the sitting room, and children have bedroom.

I have never been in a british home, but I have seen hundreds of property show set in UK (how real are they for a typical british family, I do not know).

From what I have seen there are lot of differences that make our life easier, even though we live in small flats.

Hallways are bigger where I live, everybody has a wardrobe for shoes in hallway, so we do not keep shoes in our rooms. I have three huge custom made closets in my hallway, they keep lot of storage.

Our kitchens are small (participants of Escape to the country would run a mile if they had to cook breakfast in my kitchen), but most of them have 1 m2 pantry behind the closed doors.

We have several huge parks one minute walk from my apartment building and kids usually play there. It's summer now and it is wonderful to see all parents and kids playing and talking after 6 pm. Because of hot weather, most of the kids are in the park till 9 pm, even 10 pm, when it is cooler. I guess it is our garden.

Our bathrooms are built with washers in mind, so every builder leaves a place for a washer, so they do not have to be in kitchen. People also usually have one bin for dirty clothes and it always in the bathroom. And out bathrooms are small, usually three square meters.

That’s really interesting. I tend to think in sq feet. 82sq m is 882 sq feet. My first house was 500sqm and it was tiddly, but we then moved to a largish 3 bed semi detached house which was 1100 sq feet. So your two bedroom flat doesn’t seem small for two bedrooms. A 3x3m bathroom seems large to me.

I was thinking that -3 x 3m bathroom is huge. Lots of bathrooms here are the width of a bath.

One of the things I find tricky isnt the tiddly house as such but that (and comparison is the theif of joy etc) friends who bought 10 years before me all have houses with a bit more space - so might be 3 bed still but not as cramped and may have 2 bathrooms instead of 1. Our 2 smallest bedrooms together would still make a small ish bedroom so although sold as 3 bed is smaller than some 2 beds.

Also in a housing estate those in housing association houses often have more space. We couldnt afford our house now if we were just starting out yet its a bog standard housing association house. It would have been nice to "move up" as we got older as we thought we would have but cant afford it!

3 square metres for a bathroom is not small! My bathroom is less than 2m wide.

3 square metres is small. It’s about 1.7m long and wide. Less than 2m wide.

There’s a huge difference between
3 square metres and 3 metres squared.

@LakieLady , this has been a thing for ages (small furniture).
I’ve seen it in a newbuild in the early 90s - 4 foot ‘double’ beds, etc.

Presumably the interior designers hope that prospective buyers will be seduced by the fashionable shiny newness of everything, and not bother themselves with the fact that there’s e.g. nowhere to store a vacuum cleaner.

Can we have another engagement ring thread please.It's pouring rain outside and I'm stuck in the house on my own bored to tears.