Tiny house, OH refuses to move

[JustAskAlice]

Hi all. I'm really struggling at the moment with the size of our house. OH and I bought it 4.5 years ago when it was just us, and we've since been joined by dc1 (age 2.5), with dc2 due in spring next year.

It's a Victorian terraced cottage, in a lovely location, and was great for just the two of us, bearable with one dc, but with anotger one on the way we're really starting to burst at the seams. It has 2 bedrooms, both decent sized so sharing isn't a real concern, but the downstairs living space (or lack of) is the main issue. It has an open plan kitchen/diner and living room, separated by an island - I can walk across the whole length of it in 9 paces (normal steps, not strides). There is no hallway or porch so the main entrance is straight into the living room, and due to position of sofa it's not possible to wheel in a pushchair - ATM this lives in the car, which due to on street parking within a busy town can be parked up to 0.5km away at times. There is a loft, but due to restricted head height a conversion wouldn't count as a bedroom so financially just wouldn't be worth it. There is no potential to extend.

The constant thinking about where to put stuff is a major stressor for me and I really feel that the time has come for us to move. OH on the other hand is really reluctant, and I can't quite get to the bottom of why. We did some money last year putting in a new kitchen and doing some other work, but we both knew that this would have needed doing regardless of whether or not we stay here, and should hopefully enable us to sell more easily when it does come to it. I think though that on some level he does see the work as a waste if we now just move. Also, he is totally immune to mess so just doesn't understand my frustrations with storage/keeping things tidy(ish) and organised.

Recently we did actually go and see a house, at his suggestion, as I think it came as a surprise to him that there are bigger houses out there that are affordable to us. The location wasn't ideal, but the house itself was really great and offered so much space. I had hoped that it would open up oh's eyes a bit more as to what is available to us, but he since shut down any discussions of that house, or moving generally, saying that I'm pressuring him. I really don't think I am, I'm jsut trying to get through to him that more space would be so beneficial in so many ways (both our families live far away and currently have to stay in hotels when visiting, meaning visits are few and short). Financially, we can afford the house we veiwed, and a few others currently on the market, fairly comfortably. Our repayments would go up, but to about the same level as they were when we first bought this house 4.5years ago, when our income was quite substantially lower. He is the main breadwinner, but I do still work part-time and bring in about a third of our income.

Can anyone advise on getting through to my reluctant oh, or at least offer some suggestions on how to cope with two small children in a small living space (in the event that his stubbornness wins)?

I'm the one who blocks the move plans in our house. We're in a similar situation (but thankfully past the baby paraphenalia/pushchair peak space squeeze phase) but I won't stretch the family outgoings to move up at the moment - unless something absolutely ideal came up in quite a limited search area nearer the kids' school... I won't put us in the position to take the risk until I'm back established and working in my career (been on a child-career-break and just working to get back onto the ladder in baby steps now).

We've invested a lot into storage (the user name gives it away a bit), and I'm fairly ruthless in not hanging onto things "just in case" because they're never bloody needed again - and it's perfectly fine - just less spacious than we'd like. I want to sit out whatever's going to happen with Brexit, get a bit of a better financial cushion, watch this latest wave of voluntary redunancies pan out at DH's work and work on getting my own career back before we consider moving.

I also get affected quite badly by feeling incredibly unsettled out of my home comfort zone (took me months and months to settle when we moved here) and that's a bit of a factor as well.

My partner is no good at conceptualising future possibilities. So he would not think, for example, of the additional pressures a second child would bring until he actually experienced it. When we were buying houses we went to see A LOT, because he couldn’t get a sense of how the house would be until he was in it. I would leave it until the second child is born. Yes, moving with baby not good, but he’s unlikely to appreciate the reality until he’s there. In the meantime, get ducks in a row. Tidy up credit, save if you can, do the sums etc so you are ready to spring into action when he suddenly is more receptive to the moving idea ;)

I don't think 30hours' question is entirely irrelevant. Did you have a plan when you originally bought the house? For example, we bought our first flat as a couple, did it up and sold it in two years, then bought our first house, had DC, got through the very expensive childcare years (no free hours then), then moved to a bigger house.