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.

I live in a 2 bed flat. I would love a house, and a garden of my own, where I can use all my lovely garden furniture without the constant interruptions of the neighbours walking through the garden.

I'd love to be able to actually put my dining table up (it's currently in bits all over the flat) and have people over for dinner but it's too big for the flat (I came from a large 3 bed house with a dining room).

My 2nd bedroom is my home office and doesn't even have a bed in.

Our flat is 60 m2/2bedrooms. One is tiny. We own it. Renting would cost us a lot more a month. We live in a European capital with a shortage of accomondation.
Two adults and a 6th grade child.
We have 2 children at university which is expensive. I work parttime because of my health. If we went for a bigger flat it would mean no holiday, no afterschool club, less funding of older kids and less of everything nice. We are not ready for that and make it work.

Then I was working fulltime my job came with a 200 m2 house and garden for a low rent. It was much easier. Of course it was.

Some day not working in the city not having a kid a home we might move out from the city.
A decent house around 150 m2 with a garden is the same price as our flat if you travel 100 km.

I'm another with no idea about square footage!

No outside space must be bloody hard work with a little one though. I know plenty of people manage fine, but it does create extra work and going from a garden to not having that would be very tough.

3 bed semi here (no idea of square footage) but it's a decent size for the four of us. Yes, it could be bigger and yes, all my friends and family have bigger houses but we've been mortgage free for 5 years now and can afford to buy what we want and put the kids through Uni comfortably.

The impact of having a larger house would outweigh the money we have and how much we can save. We'll move when the kids have left home but no idea what to or where but we wouldn't want a mortgage again (and will probably be too old to get one!)

We have plenty of space, but we do have a couple of odd, in betweeny spaces that are under-utilised and that annoys me. And it is a lot to decorate, finish off, which is another thing.