What do you do with a big house?

[finnski1]

My home history;

From birth to age 10 we lived in 900 sq-ft in Detroit.
Parents bought 2500 sq-ft tri-level in Livonia, what a palace!
First place in CA was 900 sq-ft townhouse.
Now in 1400 sq-ft.

I'd be seriously dangerous in 5000 sq-ft. All that room for new toys!

I grew up with 5 brothers and sisters in an approx 1100 sq ft house. 8 of us living with one bathroom (no shower until we were older) so can appreciate that.
It's probably why I now feel guilty for having just under 2000 sg ft for the 2 of us.

 

[aja8888]

My home history;

From birth to age 10 we lived in 900 sq-ft in Detroit.
Parents bought 2500 sq-ft tri-level in Livonia, what a palace!
First place in CA was 900 sq-ft townhouse.
Now in 1400 sq-ft.

I'd be seriously dangerous in 5000 sq-ft. All that room for new toys!

Robbie, you could have been my neighbor in Livonia as I was there in a 2,000+ sq. ft. tri-level house for a few years.

 

[Teacher Terry]

When we retired we downsized to 1400 sq ft. We have a kitchen, living room, dining room, 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. It’s perfect for 2. It’s right in town in a older neighborhood that’s become very popular with both retirees and young people . They are so expensive that no one is tearing down and building new. Many are only 800-1000 sq ft so people are adding on. In the 70’s our dining and master bedroom were added on which together is 500 sq ft.

 

[swakyaby]

One story 3000 sq ft home, and it feels just the right amount of space for the 2 of us. It has 3 bedrooms, 2 1/2 bath, laundry room, kitchen that opens to a family room, a dining room/great room that also holds my piano, and an office. In contrast to others, I enjoy a wide hallway that surrounds an interior courtyard. The many windows surrounding the courtyard let in lots of natural light onto the tiled hallway but still affords semi-privacy. Of the 2 other bedrooms, one serves as an occasional guestroom with a surprisingly comfortable queen sofa sleeper air mattress bed and also holds my mother's Singer sewing machine. The smallest bedroom serves as my office and also holds a small bed for an additional guest.

So I wouldn't want a smaller home as this one holds everything that is valuable to me without feeling cramped. And I wouldn't want a larger home because I know I would feel the need to fill it with more furniture just so it wouldn't look empty. And I would feel compelled to hire a cleaning service.

 

[target2019]

Honest question, if you have a larger home, what do you DO with that extra space? Do you have extra rooms for specific purposes, larger rooms that increase the square footage, lots of storage space, etc.?

We are at 3000 sq ft on two floors. If we count the basement and garage, there is a lot to clean. Lol.

Daughter comes to visit and stay overnight, so she gets her well-preserved bedroom and full bath.

Wife gets the run of floor #2. Her office and sewing room (2 bedrooms) keep her happy duirng pandemics.

2-car garage with enough room for tools and equipment is helpful. The basement is for storage, heating units, etc.

We have two large rooms on the first floor which are staging areas for inherited furniture, plants, and you name it. The extra dining room is a point of departure for the junk we are de-cumulating, and holds two dining sets that family will take away some day.

And I have my own office with a great view of the front yard.

Here's the punch line. Our home is dwarfed by many of the newer homes in surrounding neighborhoods.

 

[HI Bill]

I've been living in 800 sf condos all of my life. I'm about to move up to a 1,670 sf house with a three-car garage and a pool. This will be a huge upgrade for us, and the maintenance of such a home seems daunting to me. If I had more $, I could easily go to 2,500 sf, but I'd want someone else to take care of the pool, yard, and cleaning.

 

[pacergal]

We have a single level 1700 sf ranch style, 3bedroom, 2.5 baths. Big enough to raise our kids, and now with the two of us, plenty of space for guests and toys for the grands.

I noticed in the 80/90's, friends and neighbors building Mc Mansions, the idea was each kid had to have their own bedroom, plus office space, so 4-5 bedrooms were "necessary". I grew up sharing a 2 bedrooms between the 4 kids, but I guess that isn't done much anymore?

 

[tb001]

We have a large house. Probably very large, if some of the homes referenced are what large means. It’s a lot to maintain and we’re dealing with a bunch of deferred maintenance issues right now. Hopefully we get through the worst of them soon.

That said, we love our home and have been pleasantly surprised at how much of it we use. We have two young kids and I imagine as they get older that we’ll use even more. We have several dedicated rooms (pool table, theatre, Library/office, playroom for the kids). We would love another room for a gym, but have converted a garage to a gym for now. We have one extra guest bedroom. The only rooms that don’t get used daily are the guest room and the pool room.

Eta that right now, having the extra space and a home we can live in has been wonderful. I honestly can’t imagine How much more difficult this would all be if we were in a tiny condo with no yard.

 

[travelover]

What amazes me is garages today. Three car garages seem to be the new norm and even then no one seems to actually park inside. My BIL had a house with 3 car stalls upstairs and three below! And he didn't park inside.

 

[RetMD21]

Our issue with probably downsizing to a smaller house w/o a basement is the need to get rid of a lot of excess stuff. It would be unfortunate to buy a big house to accommodate stuff we have accumulated over decades but don't need.

 

[Golden sunsets]

This is a particularly interesting thread to me as we are contemplating our move to a downsized forever home.

We currently live in 3,000 SF on two floors. 3BR 2.5ba. We built the home in 1991. The size of our home is average for the town we live in, with many much larger homes. We raised 2 kids here who are now successfully launched, but do not live locally. We resisted the urge to update spacewise 20 years ago once we had reached a certain level of financial security. We chose instead, to gut renovate our kitchen, and master and second baths, adding no space, but which most would consider resulted in high end increased home value that was consistent with our neighborhood. In recent years, we have joked that if we could eliminate the formal living room and formal dining room (both infrequently used)from our much loved house, it would be perfect.

So now we are thinking of moving, primarily because we want/need a 1st floor MBR. DH has Parkinsons, so most frequently used living space needs to be on 1 level for future handicapped access mobility. This includes office space for each of us. And I do like a den for TV viewing, separate from a great room with a fireplace. Guest bedrooms do not need to be on the main living level, but are important as our kids are not nearby. I honestly think our needs/wants won't decrease our space needs that much, perhaps 2,400-2,500 SF.

So I emailed all of this criteria today, to a realtor who will be promoting a recently approved development in our town that will be a single family dwelling condomium community, complete with exterior landscaling/snow removal taken care of by the HOA. Just what we are looking for.

 

[Marita40]

Single here, in a 1700 sq ft house and love it. It feels wonderfully spacious, room for guests, different rooms favored in different seasons. Three bedrooms (master, office, guest), 1 bath, living room, dining room, kitchen, sun porch.

 

[Mark1]

Currently DW and I live in 3,300 sq ft house (4 beds/3.5 baths/great room/kitchen/dining/office), which we bought in 2017. We didn't want to build and this house fit us nicely. Some of our requirements were a great room off an open kitchen; an extra bedroom to convert into an exercise room; and NOT two small living rooms/spaces like you find in many houses. We rarely use both extra bedrooms (maybe once or twice a year), but they can come in handy when lots of folks visit at once. Because property taxes are not that high in CO, the extra "wasted" space doesn't bother me at all.


When we lived in the Houston area prior to retirement, our house had almost identical space, but we paid a lot more in property tax. In the same space, we had two extra rooms too (a formal living room and a game room) so many rooms were smaller. In Houston, we mostly bought a large house to get into a nice subdivision and safe neighborhood. We would have loved to bought a smaller house in Houston, but many areas with smaller houses (say 1,500-2000 sq ft) had a much greater tendency to turn into [-]bad[/-] less safe neighborhoods over time.

 

[socca]

Honest question, if you have a larger home, what do you DO with that extra space?

For some folks, ostentation might come into play. Let's send a message to the world: "I am a financial success - just look at my mansion!"

I find that 1,700 sq ft is perfect for a single person living alone (3 BR / 3 BA). A couple of requirements: high / cathedral ceilings and a great lot. McMansions on tiny lots don't do anything for me.

 

[mountainsoft]

What amazes me is garages today. Three car garages seem to be the new norm and even then no one seems to actually park inside. My BIL had a house with 3 car stalls upstairs and three below! And he didn't park inside.

My sister-in-law and her husband are building a new house with a FIVE car garage. One stall for each car, one for his boat, one for his shop, and one just because I guess. They kept trying to reduce costs so they may have reduced the garage slightly since I last saw the plans. I didn't even know how to respond, other than WOW!

The funny thing is they live in a roughly 1000 sq/ft house now, so I'm not sure why they feel the need to go so big. Oh well, to each their own.

My wife's family raised eight kids in a small 750 sq/ft house. Six girls and one tiny shared bathroom. That must have been fun.

 

[Aerides]

Our house is about 1800 sf, a 3/2, ranch, but I could easily pack on extra square footage without the house "feeling" bigger:

Another bathroom - a half bath/powder, would be nice.
Indoor laundry room (mine is in the garage, hate that)
A bigger kitchen. Mine is tiny, as is my dining room. I have a nice big family room and living room and hallway, but a tiny kitchen, go figure.
An extra bedroom for crafts/sewing, etc.

I could easily see my way up to 2500 in my current house if I added those things without really making the house feel all that big. So, it would have to get well over 3500 to feel like we'd be rattling around.

 

[GalaxyBoy]

Years ago we had a realtor selling our house and she lived in the neighborhood. We dropped by one day and DW and I were whispering to each other about how huge her house was for a couple with only two kids. Then the realtor mentioned how they were thinking of moving because the present house was much too small!

 

[molly312]

We have 3600+ sq. ft. and use every bit of it. Our daughters and their families live in the same town. The grandkids are over here a lot. We have a big tv room and a playroom downstairs and 2 bedrooms. That is their zone. During Covid - we have become the "destination vacation" spot. It is all good. We have our own bedrooms, tv room, etc. upstairs. We enjoy being a family destination.

 

[rk911]

~ 1600sf for the two of us is just about right.

 

[gerntz]

1900 sf main floor with walkout basement of which about half is finished. She uses large TV room for TV. I use LR for TV & is used for gathers. Combo kitchen/dining. Separate dining never make sense to us. Then there's MBR with closets & large bath area. Other up BR is now office/computer & has a bathroom. Downstairs is BR with bath + large space room that is mainly & regularly used for exercising. Then there's a "shop" & yard tools room. Rest is furnace & storage. We use separate BRs due to DW's sleeping issues due to her Meniere's Disease. Also have a screen ~400 SF porch.

We could do fine with a 3BR condo where one is a computer/office/exercise room.

 

[ElizabethT]

We went from 2400 to 2700 sq. ft. three years ago, BUT, we now have much less stuff in our new home in spite of it being larger. As a result, it feels spacious and uncluttered, and we love it. We have two master suites, one upstairs for guests, and one downstairs for us. We have a family room we use for !morning coffee and evening TV, and a bright and sunny living room we use for reading and entertaining. We eat breakfast in our kitchen, and dinner in our dining room. We have two additional bedrooms that are set up as his and her offices. I love our wide hallways, I love our high ceilings, I appreciate having three and a half bathrooms.

Our family and friends really enjoy our guest room set up, and I believe we have many more overnight visits, which we much enjoy, as a result.

Disclosure: We use a cleaning service. If not for that, there's a veeeery good chance we would move to a smaller house. I love everything about my home except cleaning it!

 

[NW-Bound]

My home is not really that big at 2700-2800 sq.ft., but is more than we need, now that the kids are long gone.

Never think of downsizing (too much work), and we just leave the upstairs rooms unused. My wife has not gone up the stairs in many months. I still do, because I have one of the rooms upstairs as my electronics hobby room.

 

[skipro33]

I live where I live because it's safer than living in a smaller home neighborhood. Maybe it's not politically correct, but it's much more likely to have problem neighbors when the home size and associated value, is on the smaller side. Larger homes, on larger lots are in more affluent neighborhoods and less likely to have criminal elements that would affect me.

 

[skipro33]

We have 3600+ sq. ft. and use every bit of it. Our daughters and their families live in the same town. The grandkids are over here a lot. We have a big tv room and a playroom downstairs and 2 bedrooms. That is their zone. During Covid - we have become the "destination vacation" spot. It is all good. We have our own bedrooms, tv room, etc. upstairs. We enjoy being a family destination.

Ditto. Ours is a log home on acreage and room for the grand kids to really have adventures while staying safe. (Minus the occasional bear, mountain lion, rattle snake) There is zero street traffic, neighbors, light pollution and the temps are cooler as we live at around the 2,000' elevation. Winter time, we are an hour at most to the ski resorts, summer time even closer to lakes and campgrounds if that's what they want to do for day trips.

I finished a 400 sq ft attic space into a studio apartment complete with kitchen, TV area and full bathroom. Makes longer stays more bearable when family can self isolate under the same room when there's been a little too much family closeness.

 

[tb001]

Layout can make such a difference as well. Our last house was about half the size of our current home, with a lower level that was easily 1/3 to 1/2 of the square footage. We literally never went downstairs, so we effectively tripled our sq ft when we moved.

I’ll agree with Elizabeth though—if I had to clean it, I’d like it a lot less!