How big is your home and how does that affect your life?

[Breadsauce77]

I’m currently living in a home that is much too small for our needs. Less than 1000 square foot for a family with a child. Maybe around 600 square feet. No outside space of any sort.

In our case we are fortunate as it’s temporary (1-2 years) and I fully appreciate many people are living in inadequate accommodation long term, so this is not a moan.

I’ve just noticed how much harder things feel than when we were living in a decent size house with garden.

I feel like I am permanently tidying up because everything has to be in its place or it is chaos, there is limited room for DC to play, play dates are a nightmare, DC can’t go outside to let off stream. It’s dark and cluttered and gets me down. It’s tricky to go on wet muddy walks as literally nowhere to store / hang muddy wellies and wet coats. No where to keep bikes or scooters.

I WFH too so spend far too much time here.

It’s really made me realise how much harder life is for those who do not live in accommodation that meets their needs.

That is literally the conclusion we've reached after many years of trial and error! It doesn't help that we have suffered from decision fatigue and poor taste over the years. You're supposed to behold your renovated home with pride, but I look around me aghast at all the failures 😂 and obviously, insulation and heating efficiency are more important now than ever...

Apparently just over 800 square ft. Me and two kids (and small dog). It's all open plan and works well. It feels cosy when more people are here but I like it for general day to day living. Also has a very big garden.

My house is 834.3 square foot. (I've just googled it)
It's a 3 bed mid terrace with a decent sized garden.
Me and DP have big bedroom and DD has a decent sized double room, the spare room is a single.
It has doors and radiators in silly places though so positioning furniture is quite the challenge.

I don’t know square footage, but it’s a two up two down terrace with a yard .

I hear the poster that said about keeping everything in its spot or it’s absolute chaos within a day .

two adults , dd17 ds14 . It’s been a big source of stress over the last 20 years- when we bought banks were lending anything to anyone, for many years we couldn’t even remortgage. A stud wall down the main bedroom solved the bedroom issue 7 years ago.

it’s still not ideal However, at this point we won’t move , even though now we probably could, as older one is off to uni in a few short months and the very real possibility of paying off the mortgage before 40 is looming…..

so it has caused stress over the years , but I can see a future where we will be ok here

We had a 600 sq ft 2 up 2 down that felt cramped by the time our oldest dc was three.

We moved into a 1930s semi with 3 beds that felt so spacious just before number 2 arrived. Then we extended and it was 4 bedrooms and about 1600 sq ft.

We now have a 5 bedroom 2,400 sq ft house. Each increase felt better. More space helps as the dc get bigger.

When we retire and no longer need home office space for two, I would like to downsize and give the freed up equity to the dc to help them get started. We’ll see if it all works out.

I have an unusual house. It’s a small 2 up, 2 down (think rabbit hutch!) tiny kitchen (box room size or smaller) BUT has a small front garden, larger back garden, drive & garage! It’s like a flat with a drive, garden & garage! Too small really but honestly, I put much higher value in having a nice life, mortgage paid off at 39, money in the bank, nice days out etc. yes it’s small but perfectly adequate! I earn a low wage & I work part time but my wage only goes on utility bills & living. It all depends what’s important.

~2000 sq ft (4 bed) - the thing we love about this house is that each room has some sort of storage, so we can make use of the actual square footage, if that makes sense. It's the first house we've lived in where we haven't had to constantly edit down our stuff to make it all fit.

I've been trying to convince my husband to move for at least 5 years. We love in a 4 bed Victorian Terrace which is I think just under 1200 sq ft. Bedrooms are fine. Would love another Bathroom or at least a WC but our living space is tiny. I hate it. We just re did our kitchen in a sort of love it list fashion and our house is just too small. 4 bed sounds big but it's one of those houses with no hallway. Walk straight into a lounge. We have a cellar which is sort of good for storage and sort of impractical.

66SQM 2 bed house. The low mortgage is absolutely amazing! We do feel a bit cramped from time to time as we have one DC but trying to fix this.

Basically each human in a house needs their bed and another space to chill. Or 10SQM of own space. I work in architecture and read this a few months ago

So we need one extra space to “chill” and it should help.

I'm the other way. I recently downsized from a very large 5 bed geogian terrace to a 3 bed terrace with one downstairs (large) room and gally kitchen. The pressure of cleaning and maintenance has disappeared. I had to get rid of a lot of stuff but it showed me I didn't need it. We all have a decent sized bedroom no box room and it's so much more manageable and easy to clean. It's improved my life ten fold. But I'm a single parent, might be different If there was another adult with their salt. But I very much do not want another adult here.

We moved from a 2-bedroom with small garden to 4-bedroom with large garden -- mostly so for our 2 toddlers. It's suited to our needs in lots of ways. We've only been here a year though so there's quite a few things that would make our lives better (eg hard floors in dining room for easy cleaning, covered outdoor area, more electrical outlets) that we currently put up with because we have othe issues to address in the house first and all our spare money goes on childcare anyway.

I had been thinking that when you've got kids is the time when you most need all the conveniences because you're so busy and they're so messy but can least afford to have them.

Interested to hear about this, how does it work in practice? Would it be like a bed each and your spot on the sofa to chill?

In answer to op we are in a 600sqft property, no outside storage. Desperately trying to move but it's taking it's time! We've been in similar size properties for 11 years and have two children. I'm so done with it as it's a constant mess and despite decluttering it's not made a big enough impact. No one can get any peace.

Ours is around 4000sqft. We moved from a 600sq foot house.

It has positives and negatives.

Pros:
Own rooms for the kids
Dedicated office for DH (we both WFH permanently but I'm part time).
Space for us to do our own things.

Cons:
Cleaning is like the forth bridge, just as you finish you have to start again.
I never feel like the place is clean, dust just gets everywhere
Tidying is constant and nothing is ever in the right rooms, the kids drag toys everywhere
Heating and electricity costs a fortune (£550 in December last year)
We bought a renovation project and fixing it up costs so much and takes so long.

I always thought I wanted a big house, like the one I grew up in, around 12000sqft but honestly, I do not! I have absolutely no idea how my mum managed it.

We live in a four bed town house, there's 2 adults and 3 dc, plus a giant dog. We spent years in a tiny 2 bed. It was too small but we made do. When we upgraded to a 3 bed we couldn't believe our luck. We didn't know how we'd fill it. But we did and needed an extra bedroom before we knew it.

Life's way easier with the extra space. It effected our quality of life do much.

Tiny 2 bed with small garden. It means I don't host anything and the kids don't have a trampoline or space to run about, hardly any playdates. I have no option of moving to a bigger house.

Just under 900sq ft, family of 4. Absolutely great for our needs! I wouldn't want a bigger house. Too much cleaning!

We have a 4 bed 1400 square feet house with a good sized garden, when our 2 children lived here I never thought it was too small but now it’s just the 2 of us here we find the space perfect and 4 would feel really crowded.

We are both retired so at home a lot together so grateful for the space to have our own space when we feel like it

@Littlebittiredoflife yeah that’s exactly it! Or a desk. But the bed and the “other chill space” have to be apart.

E.g
Me - Bed and Kitchen table by the window (I love the view). I have my notebooks & nice
pens there.

DH - Bed and chair in the living room next to
bookcase. Surrounded by his books and an iPhone cable & lamp so he can relax.

DC - Bed and …. Trying to fix the other bit! We’ll be measuring up for a corner desk or a bean bag area tomorrow.

It’s tight for space but if we move to a 3 bed our monthly mortgage will go up by at least £400 a month 😱

We live in a 5 bed detached that we extended from a 2 1/2 bed, we have 4 DC so everyone has their own bedroom and we have 2 living rooms and quite a large utility room (dumping ground). I think it’s the right size for our needs, ideally I would like more outdoor space but we have a back and front garden and we are at the bottom of a cul-de-sac so it is very quiet and no one really drives or walks past our house. Our house feels very lived in, it’s always messy with four teenagers in it but that’s life.

Just streamline your belongings. Do a Marie Kondo and get rid of anything not useful and anything that doesn’t bring you great joy

Ours is about 850sq ft, family of 5. It's the smallest house by a long way in our area (very affluent area) but we're stuck here as the kids are settled at school and we would have to move too far to commute to make it worthwhile.

Our youngest's room is a tiny box room (as tiny as you can get) - I already worry about her being a teen in there.

We have made the most of the space though and created two reception rooms, a separate kitchen and converted the attic to a den room (you can't stand in it but the kids love it). Everyone has a choice of space to go to if they want to.

Living surrounded by huge detached houses definitely doesn't help!

We downsized from an overly spacious five bed to a more compact four bed (1200) and love it! We got rid of lots of crap before the move

Layout is definitely more important. We've just moved from 600sq ft 2 up 2 down to a 600sq ft 2 bed flat. The flat is so much better laid out and feels so much more spacious. There's a huge cupboard for all our stuff so need way less storage furniture. Decluttering has given us way more space too.

The location makes the size a lot less important too because we spend most of our time out at parks nearby. Our last house was in a suburb with nothing nearby so spent loads of time at home.

1000sq ft 3 bed house. We would love a couple of hundred extra sq ft, but in this country they promote small house builds.

We live in a lovely area so we are considering building a cabin as an office/social room in the garden.

We are about to move to a 1200, will be closer to 14/500 when we do a bit of work but as a family of 4 I really don’t think it’s a big house; it’s a four bed but I do think it’s insane what we consider to be a bedroom in this country. It’ll do us, and it’s on a great plot and I am endlessly grateful that we can afford it but I know when they leave we won’t downsize 😂 we’ll be grateful for the breathing room!