Family size & house square footage - interesting convo. today

[Guest inoubliable]

 

I'm a minimalist wannabe. ;) Our home is the same size. Ours only has 2 bedrooms and 1 bath, though, so I wonder how your home fits the extra bedroom and 1/2 bath. Hmmm...

 

Could be the layout, I'm guessing. I thought it was a little weird when we first moved in, but according to the neighbors the house was built in the 1940s and is pretty similar to other properties in this neighborhood. Downstairs - as soon as you walk in the front door, you're in the living room. Take a step to the left and you can see the itty bitty "square" (I'll explain later). Another step to the left puts you in the dining room. There is open wall at the back into the kitchen. The "square", as everyone calls it, is really a 3'x3' space just between the living room back doorway and the stairs. Turning to the left, you can enter the kitchen. Turn to the right, take a step or two and you're into the first bedroom. Just before that bedroom, yep - about one step from the "square" is the half-bath on the left and the hall closet. The half-bath is the tiniest one I've ever seen. I honestly thought that this bedroom downstairs and the half-bath were added later, but the neighbors swear it was there originally. It's small enough that a pregnant woman couldn't possibly turn around in there. The door bumps into the toilet.

Upstairs - up a "flight", turn to the right, up another "flight. Full bath is on the left. Small. Door bumps the sink. Enough room to turn around in, though. Just beyond the bathroom is bedroom #2. To the right is bedroom #3. Small hall closet (with shelves) in between.

The house is listed as a Cape Cod by the city tax records, but a "cottage" whenever it's been listed for sale/rent on real estate listings. 950 sq ft. There is an unfinished basement, but like I said, we don't use it at all. It's really kinda gross down there and Blair Witch-weird. Dirt floor, rickety steps, one light that flickers, drafty. There is a washer/dryer down there that we can use if we want, but we don't. Some other junk that's down there that belongs to the landlord. We only use the main floor and upstairs.

[Reya]

 

I guess my rant is just that I don't understand how people can force you to get a bigger place. How do the expect me to do that? I can't afford it. I wish people (this is just a general "people") were more concerned with what kind of a parent I am instead of how many children I have sleeping in 1 bedroom. Lots of people judge me for it, but it is what it is.

I wish they would notice the fact that I work hard to always be home when my children aren't at school. Or the fact that I serve on the policy council for my daughter's preschool. Or how about the fact that I do homework with my children every night. I volunteer at their school and talk to their teachers regularly to make sure they are on track.

Ok, rant over.

 

The problem is that in apartments, the owner can get in trouble with the fire marshal if there are too many people. :/

[Reya]

Eh. When my parents took in foster children, there were other, less serious, reasons why the foster may need their own bedroom - horrific night terrors, bedwetting, etc.

 

 

Bedwetting means you need your own bed, not your own room. And if a kid has a night terror, there won't be a sleeping person in the whole HOUSE. (I had them as a toddler, and so did my DD--she had her first one in 2 years 3 nights ago!) Seems like pretty silly reasons to me. :/

[Reya]

I refused to have my ONE girl share a room with any of her 6 brothers for the same reason. So I had 4 boys in bunks in one room, 2 in another, dd had her own room and the baby girl slept with us in our room. It would have made things much easier if I hadn't made dd have her own room, but I didn't want to risk the raised eyebrows of ignoramuses over it.

 

 

Our house is roomy, but the 4-y-o will have the room with the crib, not the 10-y-o, so a girl and boy will share and the older boy won't, at least officially. It seems silly to me to segregate by gender when the kids are that small!

 

My kids pretty much always sleep in the same room, anyway. They haul all the blankets off DS9's bed and sleep like a pile of puppies on the middle of the floor. DD4 always wakes up in the night to pee, and since she ends up there anyway, there doesn't seem to be any point in making her not start out that way.

 

And beds? I haven't been able to get my son to sleep in a bed for 4 years. I'm really glad we inherited the bunkbeds that we have, or I'd be pretty peeved at the waste of money! They'd prefer a big Japanese-style futon on the floor. As it is, other families change sheets--I shampoo carpets. *rolls eyes*