Just curious as to how small your house is in square feet...

[sleepy]

We have a family of 6 in about 1100 sq. ft. If we could get rid of about half of our junk, we would have plenty of space.

[TravelingChris]

We are in a house that is about 3700 sq. ft. I like this size with 5 people including two ADHD children, especially the one who is extremely auditory. We were in a 2200 sq. ft. in FLorida but I am not sure how they measured that. It didn't add up for me and it was too small. We had an over 3000 sq. ft. house in Belgium and I loved it too. I need space. Our family conflicts decrease so much when we have adequate space and increase when we are living too close. I can see me in a smaller house but I probably don't want anything too small. I like my separate areas for separate functions. And since I now have the almost pefect kitchen (my house in Belgium was far from perfect on those grounds) I don't see me buying a house with a lousy kitchen again. The only things I would change in my kichen are the colors of the counters and the floor plus I would add an alcove to my window over the sinkfor plants.

[Susan in TX]

I would love to have more space and I joke about it becuase one of my ongoing reoccuring dreams is that I find a room I never noticed before and cannot believe I found extra space that is unused. As usual I wake up in a funk that my new room was just a dream. My husband thinks I am a nut case....but hey I am!

 

Wow! I thought I was the only one who had dreams like that. We have 11 people in a 1200 square foot house. It can get a bit crowded at times, especially when everyone is at home...which isn't often, except at night. My 16yog has resorted to going out to the car to study when she cant find a quiet spot in the house.

 

I totally agree that the important thing is not the size of the house but how the space is used. Big houses can have a lot of wasted space. We also make our rooms multi-functional: the master bedroom doubles as the home theater (our bed is a sofa-bed) and our college age daughter sleeps on the couch in the office/computer room when she is home.

 

Susan in TX

[Guest Katia]

We just bought a house and its 1350 square feet (no attic or basement). It seemed big enough for the 5 of us initially, but now we can barely find the room. We need to simplify so any suggestions would be appreciated. Just wondering if any of you have smaller homes with the same size of family.

 

Dh says ours is between 1000 and 1200. We have 5, sometimes 6 people living here at any given time. My ds comes and goes, and my older dd is at college (sometimes), my teen, myself and dh are always here, and my elderly father comes to live with us for periods of time.

 

Yep, it's a bit on the crowded side and I'm constantly decluttering and reorganizing. We store a lot of stuff that we need to keep in Rubbermaid storage containers in the attic (plywood laid across the beams).

[Doodle]

WOW! I'm so amazed after reading this thread. I have always thought my house was tiny (1325 sq ft) even though we fit in it just fine. Where did I get such a misconception? HGTV!!! Why don't they show real folks?? Everything I watch has people looking at houses that cost way, way more than I could ever imagine buying. And of course they all have HUGE square footage yet the people inevitable say "the rooms are smaller than I'd like". But, I can see now that they don't show real folks.

[runamuk]

I have learned that square footage does NOT necessarily equal to useful space. I would take a small well laid out floor plan over a large but poor floor plan anyday. I often tell cleints to "humor me" and look at a smaller home becuase it has a wonderful floor plan and also tell cleints to not get hung up on the squarefootage and instead look at the functionality.

 

:iagree:

 

When we lived in NC, there were 5 of us in a 1500 sqft home (no basement or attic) and we rarely felt crowded, simply because the layout was so functional. Here, we are renting a 2400 sqft home and the layout is terrible. There is so much wasted space and the flow is horrible. Despite the large kitchen, it's impossible to have more than one person working in there at a time. And if the refigerator or dishwasher is open, I can't get around the center island. The upstairs is laid out like a maze and I have nightmares about the kids falling down the stairs because they didn't turn a corner quickly enough. I keep telling my husband that I would never have bought a house like this because of the floor plan.

 

I would rather have a smaller, well-designed house and a larger yard.

 

My husband grew up in a 950 sqft house with 3 brothers, 2 sisters, his parents and 2 dogs. I have no idea how they did it, but they all survived, lol.

[Reya]

We have 450 sq feet but do have an unfinished basement. There are 4 of us all total, dh and the boys are over 6 feet tall. we also have 2 German Shepherds, 4 cats, and a cockatiel, all strays. It is very tight in our house. We have 2 small bedrooms, 1 bath, a kitchen and a living room.

 

If I weren't renting, I'd finish the basement in a heartbeat--even if I had cut back on my food budget, and even if the ceiling was going to be unfinished or really low.

 

Heck, if I were renting, I'd ask if I could trade the improvements for credit toward rent!

[iquilt]

We have 5 in a 1800 sf ranch with a nice backyard. We would love to have more than 3 bedrooms but the house is very well laid-out with a huge living room. I'd love to have a formal dining room but I would if I wasn't using it for school! Our kitchen, fortunately, has a large eat-in area so we use that for meals and can keep schoolwork in its own spot, especially nice for the messy crafts or strange science demonstrations that they want to keep out to show dad.

[jamnkats]

You MUST share more! Please tell us more about your day, your lifestyle.

 

Well, there is the blaaag... :)

 

I'm not sure what to say. :) We have an additional outside cooking area that helps in the summer (Feb-December) and outside eating and sitting areas.

[rafiki]

.

[rainforest mama]

We move all the time, so we have had various sized houses. We had 3 of us in a 700 sq ft apartment, 3 in a 2000 sq ft house, 3 in 3200 sq ft (including w/o basement), 3 in 1350, 4 in a 700 sq ft. cabin, and now 4 of us in 1800 sq ft.

 

We are gearing up for another move, and where we are going is very expensive, so we'll probably be looking at less than 1200 sq ft. We are getting rid of anything we can to make this move, which hopefully will be our last. The 700 sq ft. cabin was doable because it had vaulted ceilings that let in a lot of light, otherwise it would have been too claustrophobic.

 

We have more books than anything else, so DH is planning on building bookshelves up the walls in our new place.

 

BTW, I grew up with 5 of us in less than 900 sq ft.

 

Lana.

[Katiebug_1976]

There are 7 in my family, and we live in a 1600 sq. foot 3 (very small) bdrm house. It is VERY tight!!! But we are doing just fine. It's hard to keep the clutter down, but I just keep doing the "spring cleaning" thing every so often and get rid of what we don't use/need. Whenever I start feeling the walls moving in, I just remember that my great grandma raised 9 kids in a 2 bedroon shotgun style house, then I'm fine again! Or, even worse, when I went to Mexico on a mission trip we built a house (12x12, dirt floor, 4 press board walls w/ 1 window cut out, no glass, and no door) for this family of 17 that were all living in a camper that goes on the bed of a pick up truck. These people were so thankful for the beautiful house that we gave them. To me, this was a shed that we would have put garden tools in or something, but they were going to live in it, happily. This was a major life changing point in my life! At 15(the age I was when I went on this trip), i realized just how blessed we are, and how much we take for granted here. I feel so blessed with my 1600 sq. feet!!!

[Nestof3]

At 15(the age I was when I went on this trip), i realized just how blessed we are, and how much we take for granted here. I feel so blessed with my 1600 sq. feet

 

I agree. Sometimes we are just such spoiled brats. It seems no matter how much we get or how better things get, we continue to pine for more.

[usetoschool]

I agree. Sometimes we are just such spoiled brats. It seems no matter how much we get or how better things get, we continue to pine for more.

 

Seriously - the first 10 years we were married we lived in an 800 sq. ft. house. We moved from there to the 2800 sq. ft. house on 1/2 an acre that we have lived in for 15 years. I was pretty content in the old house and when we moved here it seemed like more house than we could ever fill. We had empty rooms and this is silly but the girls closet was so big that they slept in it the first few nights until their beds came. The bedroom seemed huge to them compared to the old house. I look around now and think, sheesh, I need to add on to this house - we are out of room. I didn't think we would ever be able to fill this house up. There is some Murphy kind of law about stuff expanding to fit the space?

[Scuff]

WOW! I'm so amazed after reading this thread. I have always thought my house was tiny (1325 sq ft) even though we fit in it just fine. Where did I get such a misconception? HGTV!!! Why don't they show real folks?? Everything I watch has people looking at houses that cost way, way more than I could ever imagine buying. And of course they all have HUGE square footage yet the people inevitable say "the rooms are smaller than I'd like". But, I can see now that they don't show real folks.

 

I had to stop watching those shows, they just bred discontentment. We have 800 sq ft, but we do have a basement we use a lot, which makes a huge difference. And I've also had dreams of finding missing rooms.

[the floating cottage]

I love going to Ikea for this very reason. They have the rooms all set up by square footage and you can get so may good storage ideas. I have discovered alot of space that I did not know I had because I was not using it properly.