Does anyone live in a small or average size home?

[scootlandyard]

With their family?

Just wondered as I was looking through past threads regarding home size as we are moving soon and slightly downsizing. I was shocked at the general consensus around house size! Eg posters saying anything less 2000sq ft would be a ‘struggle’ for a family of 4 (I’ve viewed a show home of this size and it was bloody massive), posters saying they are in a detached four-bed with large kitchen/diner,separate lounge, study, playroom but will ‘have to move and upsize’ because it will be ‘too cramped’ when their second child arrives.

I also recall a thread not too along where OP attached a floor-plan of her house and pondered whether it was would be large enough should she have a third child. It was a four bedroom inc en-suite, large living room and decent size kitchen-diner. There were posters insisting it was far too small even for her current family size and she would need to move by the time her kids were teens.

I feel like 90% of mnetters must live in huge houses.

Anyone else in a standard 3/4 bed semi with children/teens and somehow managing to survive? 😅

Us! 3 bed 1930s semi, one bathroom with one toilet in it. No extensions in any direction. Currently living with DH, DC2, 24, and DC3, 15. Plus the dog. Before that we also had DC1, now 25, living with us, so five of us plus the hound. God only knows how we manage! 😅 I just think of my nan, living with her parents and seven other siblings in a two bedroom terrace, a century ago, and it doesn't seem so bad! 🤷‍♀️

We'll just to be goady, DH and I live in a 4 bed house and there's only the two of us.

We have one bedroom ourselves, we have a guest room as we have someone staying with us most weekends as we live in a touristy area, one room is an office as DH works from home and the other bedroom holds both our hobby stuff which is A LOT ( I paint and he collects stuff. )

So I guess it depends on your lifestyle. We also made sure we had a room with an en-suite because we anticipated elderly parents staying with us for long stretches at a time ( in the future perhaps permanently).

Small - 1 child and 2 parents on 60m2. 2 bedrooms, 1 living room, bathroom and 1 kitchen. It works.

We have a son at university in England and pay his rent too.
We live in the center of an European capital which is more expensive than rural and are happy.

Until last year we had me, DH, two kids, 2 guinea pigs, one dog and 2 hamsters in a 2 bed semi. Would rather have done that than gone beyond what was financially comfortable for us - since I got a new job we've moved to a bigger house.

There's a segment of MN that thrives on making others feel inferior - don't rise to it.

It's who you know isn't it.

We're in a 3 bed semi, old with big rooms but very little garden.

DH thinks we are cramped, he grew up in a huge bungalow with an enormous garden.

I think we are fine, i grew up in a similar size space. Really, especially after taking DC on playdates to 2up/2downs, we have plenty of room. But if our playdates were all to stately homes I might feel we were struggling.

I live in a first floor flat with no outside space. One small double bedroom that I share with my husband and two single bedrooms for the children.

I think you sort of expand to fill whatever space you have and when that happens, people can't imagine living anywhere smaller. We are in a four-bed detached that is reasonably sized but we've managed to fill it with stuff so could easily come out with 'We need to upsize!' In reality we don't need half the stuff we have, there is plenty of room for a family of 4 to live in. Most people aren't living in huge family homes and plenty of kids share rooms.

See I think a 3-bed 1930s semi is a really typical family home. My DCs school is surrounded by streets of them and lots of their friends live in them.

I live in a tiny cottage. Two bedrooms, a loft conversion that you can't stand upright in, downstairs bathroom (and no other bathroom), front door into living room and a reasonable sized kitchen. It's fine for one, doable for two, but any more than that and it starts to feel a bit tight - however, the house on the end (same size) used to house my friend, her husband and their four children. I've seen the censuses for these houses (they are around 200 years old) and they housed up to ten people in the old days!

We can only aspire to a 3/4 bed semi lol. Two adults two kids in a 700sq ft terrace, and I feel like it's big enough for us. Would like the kids to have their own rooms before they're teenagers though 🤦‍♀️

ah I suppose so.

It’s just when someone posts a floor plan of the house they want to buy and it has a huge kitchen diner and 2 large seperate living rooms and ask ‘Not sure if this is big enough for my family of 3’ and you have more than one poster suggesting buying it and doing an extension. AN EXTENSION FOR WHAT? 🤯

2 bedroom flat with a baby and toddler. It doesn’t feel that cramped at all even with all of the children’s things. We have chosen location over size.
I think people generally just fill their space no matter how big or small it is.

Also chosen location over size. Small 2 bed flat but very central. I do love my balcony though.

A minority like to make others feel bad about their lot!
We live in 1850sq ft and it feels very spacious to me.
Used to live in 1000 square ft and that felt fine too.
We lived in both as a family of 4.

Yes, we live in a tiny new build house. It’s nice but very small. The kitchen is minute and on.y has room for one person to stand in. Obviously it also has very little storage, which is frustrating.

I don’t agree that most people fill their space. Previously I lived in a bigger house but it wasn’t full and it was lovely to have space around things.

Buggered if I know the square footage of our house. 1970s 3 bed detached, not extended, as we couldn't be arsed. It's a corner plot, so could build the house again in the back and side garden. Plenty of outside space.

4 of us here at the moment, may as well say 4 adults, as the youngest is coming up 18. Eldest is at uni most of the time.

It works for us. We aren't cluttered with stuff, as can't stand clutter, anything left around gets chucked out.

I suppose it's worth a few quid, but that's down to where we live.

Technically a semi, but it's the same size/proportions as your typical Coronation Street terrace. 2 bedrooms plus a box. Ridiculously small galley kitchen - we've been meaning to knock through to the dining room forever but no one we know has had a good experience with local builders so we keep putting it off. 2 adults, two adult-sized teens. One bathroom. Courtyard garden.

A while back we thought about moving, but we're looking at supporting the DC through university, so that's the end of any spare cash for several years.

H and I both grew up in similar sized homes - I was in a 3bed 60s council house, his folks had a 3bed 70s build - so we don't mind that much.

We live in a 4 bed house, around 1400 square feet that I thought was a good size with our 2 children, many years on we’re now on our own and we’ve just expanded to fill that space and wonder how on earth we had 2 kids here !

At the time it was perfect though !

I think most of us live in an average or smaller home, to be honest. And funnily enough, I can't remember the last time I ever posted on a thread and talked about the size of my house or the number of bedrooms.

The people who do go on about it in a 'Gosh, how will we ever manage without four bedrooms, three bathrooms and an en-suite once baby 2 is here?' way - well, they are just stealth bragging.

Yeah, like you say, it's pretty standard/average for most families, I think. I grew up in first a three bed turn of the (20th) century terraced house, then a 1970s semi.

Lots of people in our neighbourhood have had loft, side, rear etc. extensions. Some of them look they've near enough doubled their living space. We haven't bothered; we manage okay as it is, and once the DC have all left home (whenever that will be), there'll be plenty of space for DH and me.

We are in a 4 bedroom home with me, DH and our 3 children. DS21 has his own room, DD15 has her own room and me and DH share. The 4th room used to be a study but when DD7 arrived, it later become her bedroom. However, DH still needs a place to work and uses it and it doesn't really seem like DD7's bedroom so we need more space. We want to convert our loft and get at least one bedroom there, if not 2 as it's easiest for us.

We converted a lot to give it more space as it really didn't feel big enough. We extended and redesigned our kitchen, converted the garage into a dining room and also created a porch leading from our front door. These were all necessary to us for a family of 5.

Yup, we live in a small cottage. Two bedrooms, sitting room and kitchen. No dining room (I miss that). We eat outside in the summer (we have a table on the patio) and on our laps in the winter. Me, DH, DD, 2 x dogs, 1 x cat and the resident fox all manage fine. I agree with PP who said that those complaining about space in obviously large houses are simply putting up a stealth boast. Ignore, ignore, ignore. Comparison is the thief of happiness and all that.

I'm in a 3 bed flat, one reception room, one bathroom, galley kitchen.
2 kids, one adult.
Its fine, but no storage space makes things like having bikes difficult.
I think 2 adults, 2 kids would be a squeeze and I would like to upsize.
This would be no good for adult children staying over at Xmas with partner for example as the bedrooms are small.
But....is it manageable? Yes. Do the kids mind? Not one jot.

We do (lone parent, two teens). Two bed terrace (and another bedroom in the loft but storage is an issue up there due to the sloping roof ceiling) One bathroom.
Lounge, dining room and tiny kitchen downstairs.

We love it and wouldnt have it any other way. We previously lived in a bigger house and werent happier.

Yes, me, dh and three children in our 2 bed flat.
The rooms are all a decent size so really it doesn't feel too small. The girls are all happy sharing their bedroom and it fits their beds and clothes and toys well.
The flat has big cupboards so its easier to keep everything away so it doesn't feel too cramped and cluttered and its easy to keep clean.
The only time it feels too small is when we have guests sleeping on the sofabed, but for just our family it is nice.

I do look at proper houses and think how it would be nice to have that extra space but right now its not needed.